PRACH Detection in a Radio Access Network

ABSTRACT

There is disclosed a method of operating a network node ( 100 ) in a radio access network, the method comprising detecting Physical Random Access CHannel, PRACH, transmission from a user equipment ( 10 ), wherein the PRACH transmission covers a plurality of time intervals, wherein detecting comprises associating different weights to different time intervals. The disclosure also pertains to related devices and methods.

TECHNICAL FIELD

This disclosure pertains to wireless communication technology, inparticular regarding 5G networks.

BACKGROUND

In wireless communication system, many kinds of interference can appear.In some cases, if the nature of interference can be identified, suitablecounter measure can be performed against the specific type ofinterference.

A source of interference that is in particular relevant for TDD (TimeDivision Duplex, in which the same carrier is used for uplink anddownlink by switching communication direction over time) may occur dueto atmospheric conditions, which can lead to an atmospheric channelbeing formed, via which radio signaling from one part of a network canpass over larger distance to interfere with another network or anotherpart of the same network. This is sometimes referred to as BS-to-BSinterference, or remote interference (RI). Managing such interferencemay be called Remote Interference Management (RIM).

The random access procedure, performed when a user equipment or terminalwants to access a network node, is particularly sensitive tointerference, e.g. RI.

SUMMARY

It is an object of the present disclosure to provide approaches allowingrandom access management with improved robustness.

The approaches are particularly advantageously implemented in a 5thGeneration (5G) telecommunication network or 5G radio access technologyor network (RAT/RAN), in particular according to 3GPP (3rd GenerationPartnership Project, a standardisation organization). A suitable RAN mayin particular be a RAN according to NR, for example release 15 or later,or LTE Evolution.

There is disclosed a method of operating a network node in a radioaccess network. The method comprises detecting Physical Random AccessCHannel, PRACH, transmission from a user equipment, wherein the PRACHtransmission covers a plurality of time intervals. Detecting comprisesassociating different weights to different time intervals.

Moreover, there is disclosed a network node for a radio access network,the network node being adapted to detect Physical Random Access CHannel,PRACH, transmission from a user equipment, wherein the PRACHtransmission covers a plurality of time intervals. Detecting comprisesassociating different weights to different time intervals. The networknode may comprise, and/or be adapted for utilising, processingcircuitry, and/or radio circuitry, in particular a receiver and/ortransceiver and/or transmitter, for detecting the PRACH transmission,and/or for configuring the PRACH transmission.

The approaches disclosed herein allow more robust detection of PRACHand/or random access preamble transmission, in particular withtime-dependent interference, which may change over the duration ofreception of the transmission.

A PRACH transmission may comprise, and/be represented by a RACHpreamble. A time interval may comprise a part of a preamble, and/or asymbol, and/or a size of a window corresponding to a time domaincorrespondence to an FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) or IFFT (inverse FFT),and/or one or more samples for FFT, and/or the duration of a repetitionof a preamble or a part of the preamble. The preamble may be a short orlong preamble. Time-dependent interference may occur, which may differbetween time intervals. Interference or interference level may generallybe represented by signal quality and/or noise, and may for example beparametrised as SIR, SNR or SINR. The PRACH transmission may be based ona RACH configuration, which may for example be configured by thenetwork, e.g. the network node. Such configuring may for example bebased on SS/PBCH block transmission and/or PDCCH/PDSCH transmission,which may for example indicate which preambles may be used, and/or whichresources may be used for RACH/PRACH transmission. A PRACH transmissionmay be associated to a signal covering the plurality of time intervals,e.g. corresponding to one or more symbols time intervals and/ormodulation symbols.

Detecting PRACH may generally comprise receiving signaling on resources(in particular time and/or frequency resources) associated to configuredPRACH occasions, for which delays like path delay effects may beconsidered. Detecting may comprise associating such signaling with apreamble, e.g. if a detection threshold has been reached, which may forexample allow identification of a preamble with sufficient probability.The preamble may be one of the configured or predefined preamble. ThePRACH transmission may be considered a message 1 transmission of arandom access procedure. The network node may be adapted to respond witha random access response or message 2. Associating weights may compriseassigning and/or applying the weights, e.g. to corresponding summands ofa sum or factors. A weight may generally be any value that is multipliedwith another value (e.g., summand), in particular such that differentweights are multiplied to weigh different values of comparable functiondifferently (e.g., summands in a sum). Detecting may comprise, and/or bebased on performing FFT and/or DFT and/or IFFT. The weights may beassociated to any of the sums determined for such FFT/DFT/IFFT. Ingeneral, the weights may be represented in one or more sets of weights,wherein each set may comprise a plurality of weights associated tosummands of one sum and/or the signals of different time intervalsand/or noise or signal quality of different time intervals. The timeintervals may be contiguous in time, and/or each time interval may beneighboured in time domain to at least one other time interval of theplurality of time intervals, and/or time intervals between border timeintervals are neighboured to two time intervals each, wherein borderintervals are neighboured to one time interval each. Associating aweight may comprise determining and/or calculating the weight, and/orapplying the weight, e.g. multiplying it with a value.

In general, interference may be different for different of the timeintervals. Detecting may comprise measuring and/or estimatinginterference for the different time intervals.

In general, the interference may be Remote Interference, or interferencebased on mini-slot transmission (also referred to as type B schedulingtransmission).

It may be considered that weights are associated based on interferencefor the respective time interval. For example, for intervals withinterference above a threshold a weight having a first value, e.g. zero,may be applied. For intervals with interference below the threshold, aweight different from the first value, e.g. larger than the first value,may be applied. In some variants, for different levels or ranges oflevels of interference, different values may be applied, e.g. increasingwith decreasing levels of interference.

Weights may be associated to the signal in the respective time interval,e.g. signal level and/or amplitude.

Weights may be associated to a noise or signal quality estimation forthe respective time interval, e.g. parametrised in SNR or SIR or SNR.This may be alternative, or additional, to associating weights to thesignal.

It may be considered that for a time interval, different or the sameweights are associated to the signal in the time interval and a signalquality or noise estimation for the time interval. If different weightsare used, they may be dependent on each other. For example, a weightused for a signal in the time interval may be dependent on the weightused for the signal quality or noise estimation, or vice versa.

In general, a detection threshold for detecting the PRACH transmissionmay be adapted based on the weights and/or different interference fordifferent time intervals. For example, for PRACH transmission with moretime intervals with interference over a threshold, the detectionthreshold may be lower than for PRACH transmission with fewer timeintervals with interference below the threshold. Alternatively, oradditionally, a detection threshold may be a function of the associatedweights, e.g. based on sum of weights over the multiple time intervals,and/or based on a ratio of weights or interference levels.

In some cases, associating weights may be performed based on aninterference indication. The interference indication may be a signal orinformation or indication provided to, and/or determined by, the networknode. For example, the interference indication may be a BS-to-BSinterference indication, or an indication that mini-slot transmission isscheduled in a cell, e.g. overlapping with PRACH occasions.

In general, a BS-to-BS interference indication may be carried by radiosignaling, e.g. in form of reference signaling and/or SS/PBCH blocksignaling and/or broadcast signaling. The BS-to-BS interferenceindication may be an identity indication, indicating the identity of thetransmitting node transmitting the radio signaling. The identityindication may in particular be provided by the sequence of thereference signaling and/or synchronisation signaling and/or othersignaling. The identity may in particular be, or be based on, a physicalcell ID and/or other identity associated to the transmitting node.

It may be considered that the BS-to-BS interference indication iscarried by an indication message, e.g. in form of a message providing acell identity and/or a carrier interfering and/or a time delay. Themessage may be based on information from another victim node, or atransmitting node (which may have detected interference with thereceiving node as source due to a bidirectional atmospheric channel).

It may be considered that receiving a BS-to-BS interference indicationcarried by radio signaling, and/or reference signaling, is based onmonitoring for such indication and/or reference signaling. Monitoringfor such indication and/or reference signaling may be performed based ona signal quality of received signaling, and/or on a time behaviour ofsuch (e.g., based on stored information). For example, the monitoringmay be triggered if the signal quality drops below a threshold, and/or atime behaviour or changes in the signal quality occur indicative ofBS-to-BS interference.

Indicative may for example be a signal quality that improves during a ULtime interval, e.g. for a plurality of slots and/or regularly atcomparable times within the slot or UL time interval; the times maycorrespond to the time shift of signaling from the interfering node.

BS-to-BS interference may in general be interference caused bysignaling, e.g. downlink signaling, transmitted by one (transmitting orinterfering) network node like a gNB or base station and received, e.g.in a reception frequency range and/or during a reception time interval,e.g. UL time interval, by another (receiving or victim) network node.The interference may be due to an atmospheric channel or duct.

It may be considered that the indication of BS-to-BS interference may berepresented by radio signaling received from an interfering radio node.The radio signaling may indicate an identity of the interfering node,and/or comprise reference signaling as discussed herein, and/or maycomprise SS/PBCH block transmission.

An indication of BS-of-BS interference may in general indicate and/orcomprise the presence of BS-to-BS interference explicitly, orimplicitly, and/or indicate an identity of an interfering node and/orcell and/or group. In some cases, the indication may indicate a carrierit pertains to, and/or a time delay and/or distance, e.g. to a victimnode, in particular is the indication is received in an indicationmessage from the network. An indication message from the network maycomprise a message from a network node in the same group as the networknode receiving the message (the receiving node), and/or from a groupingnode, and/or a MME or other node of a higher layer, and/or a node in thecore network. The indication message from the network may be transmittedto the receiving node via an X2 or Xn interface, and/or an S2 or Sninterface, and/or pass via one or more core network node/s. First and/orsecond reference signaling may indicate to a receiver that BS-to-BSinterference is present.

The network node may operate on a (first) carrier, e.g. in TDD or FDD.The PRACH transmission may be associated to a predefined or configuredbandwidth part, e.g. an initial bandwidth part. The bandwidth part maybe configured by the network, in particular the network node. The(first) carrier and/or component carriers may be used for Time DivisionDuplex, TDD, operation. TDD system are particularly sensitive toBS-to-BS interference. However, the approaches may in some cases also beused for FDD operation. The first carrier may be a FDD uplink ordownlink carrier of paired spectrum (a pair or paired spectrum mayrepresent a UL carrier and a DL carrier used to communicate with a UE).

The indication of BS-to-BS interference (BS-to-BS interferenceindication) may be received from another network node, e.g. in anindication message, for example via an X2 interface from another orneighboring radio node like a gNB or relay node, and/or from a MME, e.g.via an S2 or S-type interface. The other node may be used for routingthe indication from another node further away, which may be transparentto the routing node/s, or they may be aware of what they are routing.The indication may be included in a communication message.

It may be considered that the indication of BS-to-BS interferencecomprises and/or is represented by radio signaling indicating anidentity of the network node transmitting it. The radio signaling may inparticular comprise the reference signaling indicating the identity,and/or synchronisation signaling and/or SS/PBCH block signaling, orother signaling indicating the identify.

There is also considered a program product comprising instructionsadapted for causing processing circuitry to control and/or perform amethod as described herein. Moreover, a carrier medium arrangementcarrying and/or storing a program product as described herein may beconsidered. A system comprising a network node and/or a UE and/or atransmitting and receiving network node as described herein is alsodescribed, as well as an associated information system.

The network node/s and/or UEs may in particular be operated in TDD mode.In general, the network nodes may operate on the same carrier, and/oroverlapping carriers and/or neighboring carriers, and/or carriersadjacent to each other in frequency space, with a small frequency gapbetween them (e.g., less than a carrier bandwidth, or between 200% and50% thereof, or less). In particular, a receiving node may receive on orclose to a carrier frequency used for transmission by a transmittingnode. Network nodes may be associated to the same network, e.g. operatedby the same operator, and/or utilising the same RAT. SS/PBCH blocksignaling may pass via an atmospheric channel.

An identity associated to a network node may in general indicate thatsignaling associated to that identity comes from a network node and/oris downlink signaling. As such, it may indicate interference from anetwork node, also referred to as Base Station-to Base Station (BS-BS)interference, if it is received. This allows identifying the nature ofinterference.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The drawings are provided to illustrate concepts and approachesdescribed herein, and are not intended to limit their scope. Thedrawings comprise:

FIG. 1, showing an exemplary communication network;

FIG. 2, showing NR signaling formats;

FIG. 3, showing further NR signaling formats;

FIG. 4, showing an exemplary PRACH detector with P=12 used detectionwindows;

FIG. 5, showing an exemplary PRACH detector with non-coherent combining;

FIG. 6, showing an exemplary PRACH configuration;

FIG. 7, showing an exemplary radio node implemented as terminal or UE;and

FIG. 8, showing an exemplary radio node implemented as network node orgNB.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following, concepts and approaches are described in the contextof NR technology. However, the concepts and approaches may be applied toother RATs and/or carrier types. In particular, the term gNB may beconsidered to represent a more generic network node.

FIG. 1 shows an exemplary communication network. The network may be runby one operator, or may comprise parts run by different operators. Thenetwork may comprise a plurality of network nodes 100 like gNbs or eNBs.The network nodes 100 may be arranged to be distributed over a largearea, e.g. to be able to provide radio access for a region like a cityand/or community and/or state and/or country. Any individual node mayhave one or more neighboring nodes which may be in physical proximity tothe node. In physical proximity, radio cells provided by neighboringnodes may overlap and/or neighbor, e.g. on purpose and/or according todesign. It may be considered that the possibility of handover isintended for neighboring network nodes. Neighboring network nodes may beconnected to each other via a communication interface, e.g. an X2 or Xnor similar interface.

A network node may utilise a list of neighboring nodes and/or cells,which may also include a list of nodes operating according differentRATS, e.g. UMTS or GSM. The list may be provided to one or more userequipments, e.g. with broadcast, unicast or multicast signaling, and/orRRC signaling or MAC signaling or even higher layer signaling. Networknodes 100 may be connected for communication, e.g. individually and/orvia a common interface, to a core network (CN) via an intermediate node,e.g. a Mobility Management Entity (MME). Different nodes 100 may beconnected to the CN via different MMEs. It may be considered thatnetwork nodes 100 and/or cells, which may be associated to nodes, aregrouped, e.g. in group G1 and group G2. A connection between an MME anda network node may be via a corresponding interface, e.g. a S1interface. An MME may be connected to higher CN layers, e.g. a gatewaylike a S-GW (Serving GateWay). In the CN, multiple entities or nodes maybe arranged and/or included, via which communication between networknodes and/or user equipments or terminals may be routed. In FIG. 1,additional network nodes 100 and/or groups of nodes are indicated as RANelements. A group of network nodes and/or cells may comprise a number NGof network nodes that may be 1 or larger. Different groups may havedifferent sizes. The number and/or identity of network nodes in a groupmay be determined based on location and/or proximity and/or density ofdistribution of nodes and/or geography and/or transmission environmentand/or radiation profile. A group may cover an area, in which cellsand/or network nodes associated to the group may be arranged. It may beconsidered that for some cases, groups in regions with a higher densityof network nodes and/or cells (per area) cover a smaller area thangroups in regions with lower density. Example sizes of groups comprise 4or more, 8 or more, 10 or more, 12 or more network nodes and/or cells.Grouping of network nodes and/or cells may be performed and/orconfigured by a grouping node, which may be a network node or a node ofthe CN, e.g. a MME or S-GW. In general, a network node may be grouped inone or more groups. A network node and/or a grouping node may determine,and/or have access to, representation or list of one or more groups, inparticular of groups it belongs to and/or groups it configured orgrouped. Signaling and/or cells of network nodes, in particular ofnetwork nodes in the same group, may be synchronised, e.g. according toa timing grid like a slot structure. Synchronised signaling may pertainto a shared time reference, which may indicate common timings, e.g. slotstarts and/or ends. It may however be considered, that differentnumerologies are being used in different cells and/or by differentnodes, which still may be synchronised, following the same timereference.

In general, neighboring network nodes may interfere with each other.However, in particular within networks run by the same operator, impactof such interference at the network side may be limited. In the case ofTDD operation, the nodes may have a common UL/DL structure, in which thesame slots (e.g., in a frame) may be associated to UL signaling and DLsignaling, so that either all or at least most network nodes will be intransmission or reception at the same time. For FDD operation, in whichdifferent carriers are used for UL and DL, a network node is unlikely toreceive DL transmission from another node on a carrier it is listeningto.

However, in some cases, an atmospheric (or long distance) channel maydevelop that can bring interference from far away nodes. Due toatmospheric conditions and/or conditions of earth's magnetic field, orsimilar effects (e.g., solar influence), electromagnetic radiation suchas signaling from radio nodes can be transmitted over large distance,e.g. through a channel or layer connection regions and/or network nodesor groups of network nodes. Such channels may connect groups or regionsover larger distances, 10s or 100s of kilometers, or more. They mayappear unexpectedly, and may be quite stable over time, enduring forminutes or hours. The areas, e.g. in cross-section or projection againstthe ground, of regions connected may dependent on the exact conditions,they may irregular and/or asymmetric. Signaling passing through anatmospheric channel will usually be directed and not be isotropic, suchthat its amplitude or power density may be a significant source ofinterference. It should be noted that a channel may be bidirectionaland/or may have one or more regions of entry or exit of signaling.Signaling passing through a channel may undergo multiple deflections onborders of the channel.

In particular, if one of the regions connected is densely populated withnetwork nodes, an atmospheric channel can have significant impact on thesignaling environment. For example, user equipments may suddenly detecta cell that is very far away. The impact on the signaling environment ofnetwork nodes may be considerable. Signaling from one or more networknodes, or one or more groups of nodes, e.g. group G1 of FIG. 1, passingthrough an atmospheric channel to a distant region, e.g. covering groupG2, is subject to a path delay (also referred to as time delay) dt, andmay lose synchronisation between groups or regions, if there was any.Network nodes 100 c 2, . . . , 100 n 2 may be in the same region as thenodes of G2, but in this example are not included into group G2. Theymay be associated to one of a group G3, . . . , Gn. It should be notedthat not all network nodes of a group may be covered by a regionincluded in or terminating a channel, and/or be affected by theinterference provided by a channel. Signaling may also be spread in timeand/or be spread or shifted in frequency to some degree. At the bottomof FIG. 1, there are shown two TDD slot arrangements for G1, G2, whichin the example are assumed to be synchronised and co-aligned, having thesame sequence of UL/DL slots, in the example UL/DL/DL/UL, starting at acommon time reference used for both groups G1 and G2. This simpleexample is discussed to illustrate the nature of potential issues, morecomplicated setups may be analogously affected. In particular UL/DL maychange on the symbol time interval level within a slot, e.g. dependingon configuration. The diagram shows how the UL/DL structure used forsignaling at G2 would arrive at G1 when passing through an atmosphericchannel and subjected to a time delay dt. This delay dt (also referredto as time shift) may correspond to any delay value, it does notnecessary conform with the timing structure of the slot grid, but maylead to signaling structures being arbitrarily shifted against the slotstructure, e.g. such that signaling starts within a symbol timeinterval, not at its beginning. Assuming co-alignment andsynchronisation, G1 will follow the structure also used by G2 for itsown cells and communication. In particular, in UL slots, it will monitora TDD carrier for reception of uplink signaling from UEs in its cell.With the time delay dt, downlink signaling from G2 (one or more nodes)may extend into an uplink slot of G1, leading to signaling from networknode/s from G2 interfering with signaling to be received by node/s inG1. It is conceivable that similar problems can occur for FDD, dependingon the carriers used. For example, an FDD carrier used for DL in onenode or group may be close enough in frequency domain to an FDD carrierused for UL in another group or node, such that the cells may interfere.

The described RI (BS-to-BS interference) may be time-dependent, e.g.introduce changes in interference and/or signal quality, e.g. due toatmospheric changes or waves. Other sources of time dependentinterference may occur.

A Physical Random Access Channel (PRACH) is used to transmit arandom-access preamble from a UE to indicate to the gNB a random-accessattempt and to assist the gNB to adjust the uplink timing of the UE,among other parameters. Like in LTE, Zadoff-Chu sequences are used forgenerating NR random-access preambles due to their favorable properties,including constant amplitude before and after DFT operation, zero cyclicauto-correlation and low cross-correlation. NR random-access preamblesupports two different sequence lengths with different formatconfigurations, as shown in FIG. 2, to handle the wide range ofdeployments for which NR is designed. For the long sequence of length839, four preamble formats that originated from the LTE preambles aresupported, mainly targeting large cell deployment scenarios. Theseformats can only be used in FR1 and have a subcarrier spacing of 1.25 or5 kHz. For the short sequence of length 139, nine different preambleformats are introduced in NR, mainly targeting the small/normal cell andindoor deployment scenarios. The short preamble formats can be used inboth FR1 with subcarrier spacing of 15 or 30 kHz and FR2 with subcarrierspacing of 60 or 120 kHz.

The basic design principle for PRACH preamble is that the last part ofeach preamble OFDM symbol acts as a CP (cyclic prefix) for the next OFDMsymbol (or SC-FDMA symbol). In contrast to LTE, for the design of theshort preamble formats, the length of a preamble OFDM symbol equals thelength of data OFDM symbols. This new design allows the gNB receiver touse the same fast Fourier transform (FFT) for data and random-accesspreamble detection. In addition, due to the composition of multipleshorter OFDM symbols per PRACH preamble, the new short preamble formatsare more robust against time varying channels and frequency errors. FIG.3 shows the mapping of symbols to FFT windows (bottom row of boxes).

An exemplary NPRACH detector is shown in FIG. 4. The exemplary detectorhas P detection windows for detection of repeated sequence, but theprinciple is applicable also for P=1. For each antenna a and each usedFFT window p, calculate a DFT or FFT over N_(FFT) samples of thereceived signal r(n,a) as:

$\begin{matrix}{{R( {k,p,a} )} = {\frac{1}{\sqrt{N_{FFT}}}{\sum\limits_{n = 0}^{N_{FFT} - 1}{{r( {{n + {n_{shift}(p)}},a} )}e^{{- {j2kn}}/N_{FFT}}}}}} & (1)\end{matrix}$

for k=0, . . . , N_(FFT)−1, p=p₀,p₀−1, . . . ,p₀+P−1, a=0, . . .,N_(a)−1, and p₀ is the first used DFT (FFT) window.

The FFT window positions correspond to the distance in time between thestart of the subframe and each SC-FDMA or OFDM symbol in uplink. Forexample, in NR Rel-15, the first cyclic prefix in each half-frame (0.5ms) is 160 samples¹, while the remaining cyclic prefixes are 144samples. Hence, assuming PRACH format B4 with 15 kHz subcarrier spacing,each OFDM symbol is 2048 samples such that ¹ Assuming here e.g. samplingrate 1/30720000 Hz for 15 kHz PRACH subcarrier spacing, and samplingrate proportionally scaled for other PRACH subcarrier spacings.

${n_{shift}(p)} = \{ {\begin{matrix}{{160} + {( {{144} + {2048}} )p}} & {{{{for}\mspace{14mu} p} = 0},{.\;.\;.}\;,6} \\{{160} + {16} + {( {{144} + {2048}} )p}} & {{{{for}\mspace{14mu} p} = 7},{.\;.\;.}\;,13}\end{matrix}.} $

For other PRACH subcarrier spacings, the expression needs to be updatedto account for the relevant cyclic prefix lengths.

The PRACH preamble in the frequency domain is obtained by extractingsub-carriers corresponding to those sub-carriers used for PRACH, i.e.N_(seq) samples, where N_(seq)≤N_(FFT)

R _(PRACH)(k,p,a)=R(k+k ₀ ,p,a),   (2)

for k=0, . . . , N_(seq)−1 and k₀=n_(PRB) ^(RA)N_(sc) ^(RB)−N_(RB)^(UL)N_(sc) ^(RB)/2. In NR Rel-15, N_(seq) is 139 (short-sequenceformats) or 839 (long-sequence formats).

Multiply with a matched filter (of N_(seq) coefficients) in thefrequency domain

$\begin{matrix}{{C_{{MF},v}( {k,p,a} )} = {\frac{1}{\sqrt{N_{seq}}}{{P_{v}^{*}( {k,p} )} \cdot {{R_{PRACH}( {k,p,a} )}.}}}} & (3)\end{matrix}$

This matched filter is constructed from the DFT of known short sequenceand the cyclic shift of this short sequence. The cyclic shiftcorresponds to a frequency-domain rotation with the shift n_(shift)(p):

$\begin{matrix}{{P_{v}( {k,p} )} = {e^{j\; 2\;{{{kn}_{shift}{(p)}}/N_{FFT}}}\frac{1}{\sqrt{N_{seq}}}{\sum\limits_{n = 0}^{N_{seq} - 1}{{x_{u}(n)}{e^{{- j}\; 2\;{{kn}/N_{seq}}}.}}}}} & (4)\end{matrix}$

The output from the matched filters corresponding to the same antenna,but from different FFT windows, can now be coherently added as

$\begin{matrix}{{C_{v}( {k,a} )} = {\sum\limits_{p = p_{0}}^{p_{0} + P - 1}{C_{{MF},v}( {k,p,a} )}}} & (5)\end{matrix}$

where p₀ is the index of the first, out of P, FFT windows included inthe PRACH preamble detector. See, e.g., FIG. 4, in which p₀=1 and P=12,for the first detection.

Now, in order to detect preamble and estimate round trip time, theoutput from the IFFT will be transformed to the time domain. Calculatean IDFT, of size N_(IFFT), resulting in a correlation vector of lengthN_(IFFT):

$\begin{matrix}{{c_{v}( {m,a} )} = {\frac{1}{\sqrt{N_{IFFT}}}{\sum\limits_{k = 0}^{N_{seq} - 1}{{C_{v}( {k,a} )}e^{j\; 2\;{{km}/N_{IFFT}}}}}}} & (6)\end{matrix}$

for m=0, . . . ,N_(IFFI)−1. Selecting N_(IFFT)>N_(seq) corresponds to aninterpolation, which can be done in order to increase the resolution ofthe timing estimation. A simple estimator of the noise variance{circumflex over (σ)}_(w) ²(a) can be formulated as

$\begin{matrix}{{{{{\overset{\hat{}}{\sigma}}_{w}^{2}(a)} =  {\sum\limits_{p = p_{0}}^{p_{0} + P - 1}\sum\limits_{k = 0}^{N_{seq} - 1}} \middle| {C_{{MF},v}( {k,p,a} )} }}^{2}.} & (7)\end{matrix}$

As decision variables, the absolute square for each value of thecross-correlation vector is used, normalized with the estimated noisevariance {circumflex over (σ)}_(w) ²(i),

$\begin{matrix}{{\lambda_{v}(m)} = {\sum\limits_{a = 0}^{N_{a} - 1}\frac{| {c_{v}( {m,a} )} |^{2}}{{\overset{\hat{}}{\sigma}}_{w}^{2}(a)}}} & (8)\end{matrix}$

where a summation over antennas, including polarizations, is included. Apreamble detector and round-trip time estimator might be formulated assearching for the maximum value in this vector of normalized absolutesquared correlations and comparing this maximum value with a threshold.

Preamble number v is detected if the absolute squared value of thisautocorrelation exceeds a threshold

$\begin{matrix}{{\lambda_{v}(m)} = {{\sum\limits_{a = 0}^{N_{a} - 1}\frac{| {c_{v}( {m,a} )} |^{2}}{{\overset{\hat{}}{\sigma}}_{w}^{2}(a)}} \geq \lambda_{Threshold}}} & (9)\end{matrix}$

for at least one value of m, within the search window of size D. Inother words, the preamble with index v is detected if there is an m ∈[0,D−1] such that λ_(v)(m)≥λ_(Threshold). This preamble detectorthreshold λ_(Threshold) should be selected with care such that the falsedetection rate is low without causing a too low detection rate.

A timing estimate follows as the value of m which corresponds to themaximum value of λ_(v)(m), i.e.,

$\begin{matrix}{\overset{\hat{}}{m} = {\arg\mspace{14mu}{\max_{m}( {\underset{a = 0}{\sum\limits^{N_{a} - 1}}\frac{| {c_{v}( {m,a} )} |^{2}}{{\overset{\hat{}}{\sigma}}_{w}^{2}(a)}} )}}} & (10)\end{matrix}$

such that the timing error in seconds equals

{circumflex over (T)} _(err) ={circumflex over (m)}/(Δf·N _(IFFT)).  (11)

Detection can alternatively be partly non-coherent as illustrated inFIG. 5. Here, two separate coherent accumulations are done on first andsecond half of the PRACH preamble. This modification as compared to FIG.4 is done in order to reduce the impact of frequency errors and timevarying radio channels.

In NR, the time and frequency resource on which a PRACH preamble istransmitted is defined as a PRACH occasion.

The time resources and preamble format for PRACH transmission isconfigured by a PRACH configuration index, which indicates a row in aPRACH configuration table specified in TS 38.211 v15.2.0 Tables6.3.3.2-2, 6.3.3.2-3, 6.3.3.2-4 for FR1 paired spectrum, FR1 unpairedspectrum and FR2 with unpaired spectrum.

Part of the Table 6.3.3.2-3 for FR1 unpaired spectrum for PRACH preambleformat B4 is copied in the table below, where the value of x indicatesthe PRACH configuration period in number of system frames. The value ofy indicates the system frame within each PRACH configuration period onwhich the PRACH occasions are configured. For instance, if y is set to0, then, it means PRACH occasions are only configured in the first frameof each PRACH configuration period. The values in the column “subframenumber” tells on which subframes are configured with PRACH occasion. Thevalues in the column “starting symbol” is the symbol index

In case of TDD, semi-statically configured DL parts and/or actuallytransmitted SSBs can override and invalidate some time-domain PRACHoccasions defined in the PRACH configuration table. More specifically,PRACH occasions in the UL part are always valid, and a PRACH occasionwithin the X part is valid as long as it does not precede or collidewith an SSB in the RACH slot and it is at least N symbols after the DLpart and the last symbol of an SSB. N is 0 or 2 depending on PRACHformat and subcarrier spacing.

TABLE 1 PRACH configuration for preamble format B4 for FR1 unpairedspectrum N_(t) ^(RA,slot), number of time- domain Number of PRACH PRACHoccasions PRACH slots within a N_(dur) ^(RA), Configuration Preamblen_(SFN) mod x = y Subframe Starting within a RACH PRACH Index format x ynumber symbol subframe slot duration 145 B4 16 1 9 0 2 1 12 146 B4 8 1 90 2 1 12 147 B4 4 1 9 2 1 1 12 148 B4 2 1 9 0 1 1 12 149 B4 2 1 9 2 1 112 150 B4 2 1 7, 9 2 1 1 12 151 B4 2 1 4, 9 2 1 1 12 152 B4 2 1 4, 9 0 21 12 153 B4 2 1 8, 9 0 2 1 12 154 B4 2 1 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9 0 1 1 12 155B4 1 0 1 0 1 1 12 156 B4 1 0 2 0 1 1 12 157 B4 1 0 4 0 1 1 12 158 B4 1 07 0 1 1 12 159 B4 1 0 9 0 1 1 12 160 B4 1 0 9 2 1 1 12 161 B4 1 0 9 0 21 12 162 B4 1 0 4, 9 2 1 1 12 163 B4 1 0 7, 9 2 1 1 12 164 B4 1 0 8, 9 02 1 12 165 B4 1 0 3, 4, 8, 9 2 1 1 12 166 B4 1 0 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 2 1 1 12167 B4 1 0 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 0 2 1 12 168 B4 1 0 0, 1, 2, 3,4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 2 1 1 12

As an example, it may be assumed that the carrier frequency lies withinFR1, and the semi-static TDD configuration pattern for the network isDDDSUUDDD, where D denotes a DL slot, U denotes an uplink slot, and Sdenotes a special slot. The special slot consists of 6 DL symbols,followed by 4 unknown symbols (GP), and then followed by 4 uplinksymbols. And each slot has a duration of 0.5 ms (30 Khz subcarrierspacing). Further, it is assumed that preamble format B4 (see FIGS. 2/3)is selected for preamble transmission, and the subcarrier spacing forPRACH preamble transmission is configured to be 30 KHz as well (preambleformat B4 duration of 0.415 ms).

An example of a typical PRACH configuration, which strives formaximizing the initial access capacity, is shown in FIG. 6. In thisexample, the network selects PRACH configuration index 167, where thevalid PRACH occasions are both two uplink slots on subframes 2 and 7 inevery 10 ms. The start symbol of the PRACH occasion is the 1st symbol ofthe PRACH slot (according to the PRACH configuration index). With thisconfiguration, for PRACH transmissions in the first slot of subframe 2and subframe 7, the guard period between the last DL symbol and thestart symbol for PRACH transmission has an 8-symbol duration (4 unknownsymbols +4 uplink symbols in the special slot). This 8-symbol durationcan tolerate interference with a distance range up to around 86 km onpreamble transmissions, which is enough for normal operation. However,it may not be sufficient when remote interference is present. Forinstance, if remote interference distance range is around 150 km, then,half duration of the preamble transmission (0.21 ms) will be interferedby the remote interference.

Since the remote interference from an aggressor node (a node causingBS-to-BS interference or RI) can affect the detection of the UL signalfrom a UE at the victim node (a node suffering from RI), and since thePRACH preamble is the first UL signal that is transmitted during aninitial access procedure for a UE to establish a connection to thenetwork, it is very important that the preamble transmitted on PRACH isrobust against the remote interference.

Remote interference may have substantially different level at differentparts of the preamble, which may reduce the performance of astate-of-the-art PRACH detector that expects interference level to beroughly the same over the entire preamble. Besides remote interference,there may also be other situations where different parts of the preambleexperience different interference levels. For example, NR supportsmini-slot (non-slot based) transmission, where the starting position andthe transmission duration of PUSCH/PUCCH can be flexibly configured. Themini-slot transmission in neighboring cells can also cause potentialinterference that varies during a PRACH preamble for reception in alocal cell.

When detecting a fraction of the PRACH reception is interfered by theremote interference or other interference sources, or when detecting theinterference plus noise level is fluctuating over a PRACH receptionduration, a gNB may adjust the PRACH detection algorithm by applyingdifferent weights on different parts of the received signal. Theadjusted detection algorithm may include one or more of the following:

-   -   A gNB applies different weights on the interfered and the        non-interfered parts of the received signal on PRACH for random        access preamble detection.    -   The noise or SNR estimation for different parts of the received        signal is firstly done individually for each part and then        different parts of the received signal are weighted based on        these estimates.    -   The detection threshold is adjusted according to the modified        detection algorithm, e.g. based on changed degrees of freedom of        noise and/or signal.

There is generally considered a network node adapted for performing onof the approaches described herein, or a combination of any of theapproaches. Also, a method comprising performing any of the approachesor any combination of the approaches may be considered.

These approaches avoid overhead and/or have low power consumption, inparticular compared to other available solutions utilising changes toguard periods and/or scheduling. The proposed solution improves PRACHrobustness when a fraction of the PRACH transmission is interfered,respectively a PRACH transmission is subject to time-dependentinterference on a time scale lower than the transmission duration. Theapproaches are easily implemented on the network side, without requiringsignaling to the UEs.

In general, different weights/parameters in the PRACH detector may beapplied, depending on the interference levels experienced in differentparts of the preamble. The interference in this document is not onlylimited to remote interference but also for instance interference fromother scenarios/sources such as mini-slot transmission in neighboringcells that can also cause potential interference that varies during arandom-access preamble for reception in a local cell. In all such cases,with the invention, the gNB adjusts the detection algorithm by applyingdifferent weights on different parts of the received signal whenperforming random-access preamble detection.

The use of this adjusted detection algorithm can be triggered by adetection of the uneven interference level over a preamble receptionduration by the network, or based on some prior knowledge of theinterference conditions (e.g., detection of RI), or a prediction of theinterference situation; or this adjust detection algorithm can be usedwithout knowledge about the presence of interference.

In the following, examples of possible ways of performing adjustment indifferent steps of a preamble detection algorithm are described. Notethat in the examples below, interference sources may be assumed to bedownlink signals transmitted from remote base stations due toatmospheric ducting. However, the proposed methods are generic for anyother scenarios where the interference plus noise level is not constantover a preamble reception duration.

Approaches of applying different weights on the interfered and thenon-interfered parts of the received signal on PRACH may be considered.In an example, a gNB may apply different weights on the interfered andthe non-interfered parts of the received signal on PRACH for randomaccess preamble detection. More generally, different weights may beapplied depending on interference level on different part. That is, in ageneral case, the gNB receiver will receive a vector y_(t) ofcomplex-valued symbols on its receive antennas at time t where

y _(t) =h ^(T) s _(t) +n _(RI,t) +e _(t) ,t=0, . . . ,N−1

h is the effective channel vector between the UE and gNB (accounting forpossible precoding at the UE), s_(t) is the time-domain symboltransmitted n_(RI,t) is the remote interference at time t and e_(t)corresponds to other interference and noise, and N is the number oftime-domain samples in the detection window for PRACH. The gNB willtypically apply a spatial receiver filter g_(RX) to obtain a scalarsample r_(t)

r _(t) =g ^(T) y _(t) ,t=0, . . . ,N−1

According to some variants, an additional weight w_(t) is applied to thetime-domain samples before the subsequent steps of the detectionalgorithm is applied (such as performing FFT processing)

{tilde over (r)} _(t) =w _(t) r _(t) ,t=0, . . . ,N−1

As a special case, the value of the weights w_(t) applied to theinterfered parts of the received signal is zero. The interfered andnon-interfered parts can be determined based on a certain interferencethreshold, or a certain interference over noise threshold, or a certaininterference plus noise threshold.

As an example, the preamble format 0, which has no sequence repetitionas shown in FIGS. 2/3, is configured for random-access preambletransmission. Assume that the first 25% of the preamble transmissionduration is interfered by the remote interference. Then, the gNB canzero out or put lower weights on the first 25% of the received sampleswhen before applying FFT on the time domain samples of the receivedsignal.

In another example, the preamble format B4 with the same sequencerepeated multiple times for a preamble transmission, as shown in FIGS.2/3, is configured for random-access preamble transmission. It may beassumed that the first half of the preamble transmission duration isinterfered by remote interference. Then, the gNB can first calculate howmany sequence repetitions are affected by the interference, then onlyperform detection steps on the non-interfered sequences (e.g., set thevalue of p₀ and P for PRACH preamble detection according to the timedomain position of the non-interfered sequences), or put lower weightson the interfered time domain samples when performing coherently ornon-coherently combining FFT of the matched filter outputs of thesequences.

In some examples, the same weight may be applied to all inputs oroutputs of an FFT, and individual weights are not used for eachtime-domain sample.

In some approaches, applying different weights on the noise or SNRestimation for the interfered and the non-interfered parts of thereceived signal on PRACH may be considered. In some examples, a noise orSNR or SIR or SINR estimation for the interfered and the non-interferedparts of the received signal can be firstly done individually and thenweighted differently in the summation for the noise power estimation orSNR estimation. As a special case, the value of the weights applied tothe estimate noise power or SNRs for interfered parts of the receivedsignal could be set to zero.

As an example, for the preamble format 0 with no sequence repetition, ifthe first 25% of the preamble transmission duration is interfered, then,the gNB can separately estimate the noise power or SNR for the first 25%and the rest 75% of the receive time domain samples, then, the gNBapplies different weights on these estimated noise powers or SNRs whenderiving the final estimated noise power or SNR.

In another example, using the preamble format B4 with the same sequencerepeated multiple times for a preamble transmission, the gNB can performnoise estimation or SNR estimation per FFT window, then, apply differentweights in the summation for the noise power or SNR estimation.

In some approaches, a general interference mitigation algorithm may beconsidered. In some examples, the noise or SNR (or in general, SIR orSINR) estimation for different parts of the received signal may befirstly done individually for each part, and then the different parts ofthe signal may be weighted based on these estimates. In the case with arepeated sequence, this could mean e.g. weighting the different receivewindows (sequence repetitions) based on the SNR/SIR/SINR estimates whencoherently (or non-coherently) combining the different windows. Withthis method, prior knowledge of which parts are interfered is notneeded.

Specifically, the noise level may be first determined independently foreach window, e.g. by replacing Eq. (7) by

$\begin{matrix}{{{\overset{\hat{}}{\sigma}}_{w,p}^{2}(a)} = {\sum\limits_{k = 0}^{N_{seq} - 1}| {C_{{MF},v}( {k,p,a} )} \middle| {}_{2}. }} & (12)\end{matrix}$

Alternatively, the noise level can be estimated in time domain, afterIDFT, e.g. based on.

$\begin{matrix}{{c_{v}( {m,p,a} )} = {\frac{1}{\sqrt{N_{IFFT}}}{\sum\limits_{k = 0}^{N_{seq} - 1}{{C_{{MF},v}( {k,p,a} )}e^{j\; 2{{{km}}/N_{IFFT}}}}}}} & (13)\end{matrix}$

The noise level for window p and antenna a can then be estimated as anaverage of |c_(v)(m,p,a)| or |c_(v)(m,p,a)|² over all the different timelags m for all different sequences v. One may alternatively in theaveraging omit the largest (or few largest) values as those (arecorrelation peaks) that may indicate a detected sequence and should notbe counted as noise. One may also omit averaging over sequences.

The obtained noise levels may then used to determine weights w_(p,a)that are used in the coherent combining. For example, Eq. (5) may bereplaced by

$\begin{matrix}{{{C_{v}( {k,a} )} = {\sum\limits_{p = p_{0}}^{p_{0} + P - 1}{w_{p,a}{C_{{MF},v}( {k,p,a} )}}}}.} & (14)\end{matrix}$

Analogously, the obtained noise level may also be used to determineweights for non-coherent combining.

One way of determining the weights is to first estimate a rough desiredsignal level based on the windows with low noise level, assume that thedesired signal level is the same in all windows, and then derivetraditional maximum-ratio combining (MRC) weights.

In some approaches, adjusting the detection threshold according to theimpact of interference may be considered. For example, the detectionthreshold may be adjusted based on the modified receiver algorithmsdescribed in earlier approaches. For example, the threshold may beupdated to match the changed degrees of freedom of noise and/or signal.In particular, the updated threshold may take into account the fact thatthe received signal in some detection windows, or parts of detectionwindow(s) have been zeroed out.

FIG. 7 schematically shows a radio node, in particular a terminal orwireless device 10, which may in particular be implemented as a UE (UserEquipment). Radio node 10 comprises processing circuitry (which may alsobe referred to as control circuitry) 20, which may comprise a controllerconnected to a memory. Any module of the radio node 10, e.g. acommunicating module or determining module, may be implemented in and/orexecutable by, the processing circuitry 20, in particular as module inthe controller. Radio node 10 also comprises radio circuitry 22providing receiving and transmitting or transceiving functionality(e.g., one or more transmitters and/or receivers and/or transceivers),the radio circuitry 22 being connected or connectable to the processingcircuitry. An antenna circuitry 24 of the radio node 10 is connected orconnectable to the radio circuitry 22 to collect or send and/or amplifysignals. Radio circuitry 22 and the processing circuitry 20 controllingit are configured for cellular communication with a network, e.g. a RANas described herein, and/or for sidelink communication. Radio node 10may generally be adapted to carry out any of the methods of operating aradio node like terminal or UE disclosed herein; in particular, it maycomprise corresponding circuitry, e.g. processing circuitry, and/ormodules.

FIG. 8 schematically show a radio node 100, which may in particular beimplemented as a network node 100, for example an eNB or gNB or similarfor NR. Radio node 100 comprises processing circuitry (which may also bereferred to as control circuitry) 120, which may comprise a controllerconnected to a memory. Any module, e.g. transmitting module and/orreceiving module and/or configuring module of the node 100 may beimplemented in and/or executable by the processing circuitry 120. Theprocessing circuitry 120 is connected to control radio circuitry 122 ofthe node 100, which provides receiver and transmitter and/or transceiverfunctionality (e.g., comprising one or more transmitters and/orreceivers and/or transceivers). An antenna circuitry 124 may beconnected or connectable to radio circuitry 122 for signal reception ortransmittance and/or amplification. Node 100 may be adapted to carry outany of the methods for operating a radio node or network node disclosedherein; in particular, it may comprise corresponding circuitry, e.g.processing circuitry, and/or modules. The antenna circuitry 124 may beconnected to and/or comprise an antenna array. The node 100,respectively its circuitry, may be adapted to perform any of the methodsof operating a network node or a radio node as described herein; inparticular, it may comprise corresponding circuitry, e.g. processingcircuitry, and/or modules. The radio node 100 may generally comprisecommunication circuitry, e.g. for communication with another networknode, like a radio node, and/or with a core network and/or an internetor local net, in particular with an information system, which mayprovide information and/or data to be transmitted to a user equipment.

Subject transmission may be data signaling or control signaling. Thetransmission may be on a shared or dedicated channel. Data signaling maybe on a data channel, for example on a PDSCH or PSSCH, or on a dedicateddata channel, e.g. for low latency and/or high reliability, e.g. a URLLCchannel. Control signaling may be on a control channel, for example on acommon control channel or a PDCCH or PSCCH, and/or comprise one or moreDCI messages or SCI messages. In some cases, the subject transmissionmay comprise, or represent, reference signaling. For example, it maycomprise DM-RS and/or pilot signaling and/or discovery signaling and/orsounding signaling and/or phase tracking signaling and/or cell-specificreference signaling and/or user-specific signaling, in particularCSI-RS. A subject transmission may pertain to one scheduling assignmentand/or one acknowledgement signaling process (e.g., according toidentifier or subidentifier), and/or one subdivision. In some cases, asubject transmission may cross the borders of subdivisions in time, e.g.due to being scheduled to start in one subdivision and extending intoanother, or even crossing over more than one subdivision. In this case,it may be considered that the subject transmission is associated to thesubdivision it ends in.

It may be considered that transmitting acknowledgement information, inparticular of acknowledgement information, is based on determiningwhether the subject transmission/s has or have been received correctly,e.g. based on error coding and/or reception quality. Reception qualitymay for example be based on a determined signal quality. Acknowledgementinformation may generally be transmitted to a signaling radio nodeand/or node arrangement and/or to a network.

Acknowledgement information, or bit/s of a subpattern structure of suchinformation, may represent and/or comprise one or more bits, inparticular a pattern of bits. Multiple bits pertaining to a datastructure or substructure or message like a control message may beconsidered a subpattern. The structure or arrangement of acknowledgementinformation may indicate the order, and/or meaning, and/or mapping,and/or pattern of bits (or subpatterns of bits) of the information. Thestructure or mapping may in particular indicate one or more data blockstructures, e.g. code blocks and/or code block groups and/or transportblocks and/or messages, e.g. command messages, the acknowledgementinformation pertains to, and/or which bits or subpattern of bits areassociated to which data block structure. In some cases, the mapping maypertain to one or more acknowledgement signaling processes, e.g.processes with different identifiers, and/or one or more different datastreams. The configuration or structure or codebook may indicate towhich process/es and/or data stream/s the information pertains.Generally, the acknowledgement information may comprise one or moresubpatterns, each of which may pertain to a data block structure, e.g. acode block or code block group or transport block. A subpattern may bearranged to indicate acknowledgement or non-acknowledgement, or anotherretransmission state like non-scheduling or non-reception, of theassociated data block structure. It may be considered that a subpatterncomprises one bit, or in some cases more than one bit. It should benoted that acknowledgement information may be subjected to significantprocessing before being transmitted with acknowledgement signaling.Different configurations may indicate different sizes and/or mappingand/or structures and/or pattern.

An acknowledgment signaling process (providing acknowledgmentinformation) may be a HARQ process, and/or be identified by a processidentifier, e.g. a HARQ process identifier or subidentifier.Acknowledgement signaling, and/or associated acknowledgementinformation, may be referred to as feedback or acknowledgement feedback.It should be noted that data blocks or structures to which subpatternsmay pertain may be intended to carry data (e.g., information and/orsystemic and/or coding bits). However, depending on transmissionconditions, such data may be received or not received (or not receivedcorrectly), which may be indicated correspondingly in the feedback. Insome cases, a subpattern of acknowledgement signaling may comprisepadding bits, e.g. if the acknowledgement information for a data blockrequires fewer bits than indicated as size of the subpattern. Such mayfor example happen if the size is indicated by a unit size larger thanrequired for the feedback.

Acknowledgment information may generally indicate at least ACK or NACK,e.g. pertaining to an acknowledgment signaling process, or an element ofa data block structure like a data block, subblock group or subblock, ora message, in particular a control message. Generally, to anacknowledgment signaling process there may be associated one specificsubpattern and/or a data block structure, for which acknowledgmentinformation may be provided. Acknowledgement information may comprise aplurality of pieces of information, represented in a plurality of HARQstructures.

An acknowledgment signaling process may determine correct or incorrectreception, and/or corresponding acknowledgement information, of a datablock like a transport block, and/or substructures thereof, based oncoding bits associated to the data block, and/or based on coding bitsassociated to one or more data block and/or subblocks and/or subblockgroup/s. Acknowledgement information (determined by an acknowledgementsignaling process) may pertain to the data block as a whole, and/or toone or more subblocks or subblock groups. A code block may be consideredan example of a subblock, whereas a code block group may be consideredan example of a subblock group. Accordingly, the associated subpatternmay comprise one or more bits indicating reception status or feedback ofthe data block, and/or one or more bits indicating reception status orfeedback of one or more subblocks or subblock groups. Each subpattern orbit of the subpattern may be associated and/or mapped to a specific datablock or subblock or subblock group. In some variants, correct receptionfor a data block may be indicated if all subblocks or subblock groupsare correctly identified. In such a case, the subpattern may representacknowledgement information for the data block as a whole, reducingoverhead in comparison to provide acknowledgement information for thesubblocks or subblock groups. The smallest structure (e.g.subblock/subblock group/data block) the subpattern providesacknowledgement information for and/or is associated to may beconsidered its (highest) resolution. In some variants, a subpattern mayprovide acknowledgment information regarding several elements of a datablock structure and/or at different resolution, e.g. to allow morespecific error detection. For example, even if a subpattern indicatesacknowledgment signaling pertaining to a data block as a whole, in somevariants higher resolution (e.g., subblock or subblock group resolution)may be provided by the subpattern. A subpattern may generally compriseone or more bits indicating ACK/NACK for a data block, and/or one ormore bits for indicating ACK/NACK for a subblock or subblock group, orfor more than one subblock or subblock group.

A subblock and/or subblock group may comprise information bits(representing the data to be transmitted, e.g. user data and/ordownlink/sidelink data or uplink data). It may be considered that a datablock and/or subblock and/or subblock group also comprises error one ormore error detection bits, which may pertain to, and/or be determinedbased on, the information bits (for a subblock group, the errordetection bit/s may be determined based on the information bits and/orerror detection bits and/or error correction bits of the subblock/s ofthe subblock group). A data block or substructure like subblock orsubblock group may comprise error correction bits, which may inparticular be determined based on the information bits and errordetection bits of the block or substructure, e.g. utilising an errorcorrection coding scheme, e.g. LDPC or polar coding. Generally, theerror correction coding of a data block structure (and/or associatedbits) may cover and/or pertain to information bits and error detectionbits of the structure. A subblock group may represent a combination ofone or more code blocks, respectively the corresponding bits. A datablock may represent a code block or code block group, or a combinationof more than one code block groups. A transport block may be split up incode blocks and/or code block groups, for example based on the bit sizeof the information bits of a higher layer data structure provided forerror coding and/or size requirements or preferences for error coding,in particular error correction coding. Such a higher layer datastructure is sometimes also referred to as transport block, which inthis context represents information bits without the error coding bitsdescribed herein, although higher layer error handling information maybe included, e.g. for an internet protocol like TCP. However, such errorhandling information represents information bits in the context of thisdisclosure, as the acknowledgement signaling procedures described treatit accordingly.

In some variants, a subblock like a code block may comprise errorcorrection bits, which may be determined based on the information bit/sand/or error detection bit/s of the subblock. An error correction codingscheme may be used for determining the error correction bits, e.g. basedon LDPC or polar coding or Reed-Mueller coding. In some cases, asubblock or code block may be considered to be defined as a block orpattern of bits comprising information bits, error detection bit/sdetermined based on the information bits, and error correction bit/sdetermined based on the information bits and/or error detection bit/s.It may be considered that in a subblock, e.g. code block, theinformation bits (and possibly the error correction bit/s) are protectedand/or covered by the error correction scheme or corresponding errorcorrection bit/s. A code block group may comprise one or more codeblocks. In some variants, no additional error detection bits and/orerror correction bits are applied, however, it may be considered toapply either or both. A transport block may comprise one or more codeblock groups. It may be considered that no additional error detectionbits and/or error correction bits are applied to a transport block,however, it may be considered to apply either or both. In some specificvariants, the code block group/s comprise no additional layers of errordetection or correction coding, and the transport block may compriseonly additional error detection coding bits, but no additional errorcorrection coding. This may particularly be true if the transport blocksize is larger than the code block size and/or the maximum size forerror correction coding. A subpattern of acknowledgement signaling (inparticular indicating ACK or NACK) may pertain to a code block, e.g.indicating whether the code block has been correctly received. It may beconsidered that a subpattern pertains to a subgroup like a code blockgroup or a data block like a transport block. In such cases, it mayindicate ACK, if all subblocks or code blocks of the group ordata/transport block are received correctly (e.g. based on a logical ANDoperation), and NACK or another state of non-correct reception if atleast one subblock or code block has not been correctly received. Itshould be noted that a code block may be considered to be correctlyreceived not only if it actually has been correctly received, but alsoif it can be correctly reconstructed based on soft-combining and/or theerror correction coding.

A subpattern/HARQ structure may pertain to one acknowledgement signalingprocess and/or one carrier like a component carrier and/or data blockstructure or data block. It may in particular be considered that one(e.g. specific and/or single) subpattern pertains, e.g. is mapped by thecodebook, to one (e.g., specific and/or single) acknowledgementsignaling process, e.g. a specific and/or single HARQ process. It may beconsidered that in the bit pattern, subpatterns are mapped toacknowledgement signaling processes and/or data blocks or data blockstructures on a one-to-one basis. In some variants, there may bemultiple subpatterns (and/or associated acknowledgment signalingprocesses) associated to the same component carrier, e.g. if multipledata streams transmitted on the carrier are subject to acknowledgementsignaling processes. A subpattern may comprise one or more bits, thenumber of which may be considered to represent its size or bit size.Different bit n-tupels (n being 1 or larger) of a subpattern may beassociated to different elements of a data block structure (e.g., datablock or subblock or subblock group), and/or represent differentresolutions. There may be considered variants in which only oneresolution is represented by a bit pattern, e.g. a data block. A bitn-tupel may represent acknowledgement information (also referred to afeedback), in particular ACK or NACK, and optionally, (if n>1), mayrepresent DTX/DRX or other reception states. ACK/NACK may be representedby one bit, or by more than one bit, e.g. to improve disambiguity of bitsequences representing ACK or NACK, and/or to improve transmissionreliability.

The acknowledgement information or feedback information may pertain to aplurality of different transmissions, which may be associated to and/orrepresented by data block structures, respectively the associated datablocks or data signaling. The data block structures, and/or thecorresponding blocks and/or signaling, may be scheduled for simultaneoustransmission, e.g. for the same transmission timing structure, inparticular within the same slot or subframe, and/or on the samesymbol/s. However, alternatives with scheduling for non-simultaneoustransmission may be considered. For example, the acknowledgmentinformation may pertain to data blocks scheduled for differenttransmission timing structures, e.g. different slots (or mini-slots, orslots and mini-slots) or similar, which may correspondingly be received(or not or wrongly received). Scheduling signaling may generallycomprise indicating resources, e.g. time and/or frequency resources, forexample for receiving or transmitting the scheduled signaling.

References to specific resource structures like transmission timingstructure and/or symbol and/or slot and/or mini-slot and/or subcarrierand/or carrier may pertain to a specific numerology, which may bepredefined and/or configured or configurable. A transmission timingstructure may represent a time interval, which may cover one or moresymbols. Some examples of a transmission timing structure aretransmission time interval (TTI), subframe, slot and mini-slot. A slotmay comprise a predetermined, e.g. predefined and/or configured orconfigurable, number of symbols, e.g. 6 or 7, or 12 or 14. A mini-slotmay comprise a number of symbols (which may in particular beconfigurable or configured) smaller than the number of symbols of aslot, in particular 1, 2, 3 or 4 symbols. A transmission timingstructure may cover a time interval of a specific length, which may bedependent on symbol time length and/or cyclic prefix used. Atransmission timing structure may pertain to, and/or cover, a specifictime interval in a time stream, e.g. synchronized for communication.Timing structures used and/or scheduled for transmission, e.g. slotand/or mini-slots, may be scheduled in relation to, and/or synchronizedto, a timing structure provided and/or defined by other transmissiontiming structures. Such transmission timing structures may define atiming grid, e.g., with symbol time intervals within individualstructures representing the smallest timing units. Such a timing gridmay for example be defined by slots or subframes (wherein in some cases,subframes may be considered specific variants of slots). A transmissiontiming structure may have a duration (length in time) determined basedon the durations of its symbols, possibly in addition to cyclicprefix/es used. The symbols of a transmission timing structure may havethe same duration, or may in some variants have different duration. Thenumber of symbols in a transmission timing structure may be predefinedand/or configured or configurable, and/or be dependent on numerology.The timing of a mini-slot may generally be configured or configurable,in particular by the network and/or a network node. The timing may beconfigurable to start and/or end at any symbol of the transmissiontiming structure, in particular one or more slots. A subframe maycomprise 1 or more slots, depending on numerology. A frame may comprise10 subframes.

There is generally considered a program product comprising instructionsadapted for causing processing and/or control circuitry to carry outand/or control any method described herein, in particular when executedon the processing and/or control circuitry. Also, there is considered acarrier medium arrangement carrying and/or storing a program product asdescribed herein.

A carrier medium arrangement may comprise one or more carrier media.Generally, a carrier medium may be accessible and/or readable and/orreceivable by processing or control circuitry. Storing data and/or aprogram product and/or code may be seen as part of carrying data and/ora program product and/or code. A carrier medium generally may comprise aguiding/transporting medium and/or a storage medium. Aguiding/transporting medium may be adapted to carry and/or carry and/orstore signals, in particular electromagnetic signals and/or electricalsignals and/or magnetic signals and/or optical signals. A carriermedium, in particular a guiding/transporting medium, may be adapted toguide such signals to carry them. A carrier medium, in particular aguiding/transporting medium, may comprise the electromagnetic field,e.g. radio waves or microwaves, and/or optically transmissive material,e.g. glass fiber, and/or cable. A storage medium may comprise at leastone of a memory, which may be volatile or non-volatile, a buffer, acache, an optical disc, magnetic memory, flash memory, etc. A carriermedium and/or storage medium may in particular be a non-transitorymedium.

A system comprising one or more radio nodes as described herein, inparticular a network node and a user equipment, is described. The systemmay be a wireless communication system, and/or provide and/or representa radio access network.

Moreover, there may be generally considered a method of operating aninformation system, the method comprising providing information.Alternatively, or additionally, an information system adapted forproviding information may be considered. Providing information maycomprise providing information for, and/or to, a target system, whichmay comprise and/or be implemented as radio access network and/or aradio node, in particular a network node or user equipment or terminal.Providing information may comprise transferring and/or streaming and/orsending and/or passing on the information, and/or offering theinformation for such and/or for download, and/or triggering suchproviding, e.g. by triggering a different system or node to streamand/or transfer and/or send and/or pass on the information. Theinformation system may comprise, and/or be connected or connectable to,a target, for example via one or more intermediate systems, e.g. a corenetwork and/or internet and/or private or local network. Information maybe provided utilising and/or via such intermediate system/s. Providinginformation may be for radio transmission and/or for transmission via anair interface and/or utilising a RAN or radio node as described herein.Connecting the information system to a target, and/or providinginformation, may be based on a target indication, and/or adaptive to atarget indication. A target indication may indicate the target, and/orone or more parameters of transmission pertaining to the target and/orthe paths or connections over which the information is provided to thetarget. Such parameter/s may in particular pertain to the air interfaceand/or radio access network and/or radio node and/or network node.Example parameters may indicate for example type and/or nature of thetarget, and/or transmission capacity (e.g., data rate) and/or latencyand/or reliability and/or cost, respectively one or more estimatesthereof. The target indication may be provided by the target, ordetermined by the information system, e.g. based on information receivedfrom the target and/or historical information, and/or be provided by auser, for example a user operating the target or a device incommunication with the target, e.g. via the RAN and/or air interface.For example, a user may indicate on a user equipment communicating withthe information system that information is to be provided via a RAN,e.g. by selecting from a selection provided by the information system,for example on a user application or user interface, which may be a webinterface. An information system may comprise one or more informationnodes. An information node may generally comprise processing circuitryand/or communication circuitry. In particular, an information systemand/or an information node may be implemented as a computer and/or acomputer arrangement, e.g. a host computer or host computer arrangementand/or server or server arrangement. In some variants, an interactionserver (e.g., web server) of the information system may provide a userinterface, and based on user input may trigger transmitting and/orstreaming information provision to the user (and/or the target) fromanother server, which may be connected or connectable to the interactionserver and/or be part of the information system or be connected orconnectable thereto. The information may be any kind of data, inparticular data intended for a user of for use at a terminal, e.g. videodata and/or audio data and/or location data and/or interactive dataand/or game-related data and/or environmental data and/or technical dataand/or traffic data and/or vehicular data and/or circumstantial dataand/or operational data. The information provided by the informationsystem may be mapped to, and/or mappable to, and/or be intended formapping to, communication or data signaling and/or one or more datachannels as described herein (which may be signaling or channel/s of anair interface and/or used within a RAN and/or for radio transmission).It may be considered that the information is formatted based on thetarget indication and/or target, e.g. regarding data amount and/or datarate and/or data structure and/or timing, which in particular may bepertaining to a mapping to communication or data signaling and/or a datachannels. Mapping information to data signaling and/or data channel/smay be considered to refer to using the signaling/channel/s to carry thedata, e.g. on higher layers of communication, with thesignaling/channel/s underlying the transmission. A target indicationgenerally may comprise different components, which may have differentsources, and/or which may indicate different characteristics of thetarget and/or communication path/s thereto. A format of information maybe specifically selected, e.g. from a set of different formats, forinformation to be transmitted on an air interface and/or by a RAN asdescribed herein. This may be particularly pertinent since an airinterface may be limited in terms of capacity and/or of predictability,and/or potentially be cost sensitive. The format may be selected to beadapted to the transmission indication, which may in particular indicatethat a RAN or radio node as described herein is in the path (which maybe the indicated and/or planned and/or expected path) of informationbetween the target and the information system. A (communication) path ofinformation may represent the interface/s (e.g., air and/or cableinterfaces) and/or the intermediate system/s (if any), between theinformation system and/or the node providing or transferring theinformation, and the target, over which the information is, or is to be,passed on. A path may be (at least partly) undetermined when a targetindication is provided, and/or the information is provided/transferredby the information system, e.g. if an internet is involved, which maycomprise multiple, dynamically chosen paths. Information and/or a formatused for information may be packet-based, and/or be mapped, and/or bemappable and/or be intended for mapping, to packets. Alternatively, oradditionally, there may be considered a method for operating a targetdevice comprising providing a target indicating to an informationsystem. More alternatively, or additionally, a target device may beconsidered, the target device being adapted for providing a targetindication to an information system. In another approach, there may beconsidered a target indication tool adapted for, and/or comprising anindication module for, providing a target indication to an informationsystem. The target device may generally be a target as described above.A target indication tool may comprise, and/or be implemented as,software and/or application or app, and/or web interface or userinterface, and/or may comprise one or more modules for implementingactions performed and/or controlled by the tool. The tool and/or targetdevice may be adapted for, and/or the method may comprise, receiving auser input, based on which a target indicating may be determined and/orprovided. Alternatively, or additionally, the tool and/or target devicemay be adapted for, and/or the method may comprise, receivinginformation and/or communication signaling carrying information, and/oroperating on, and/or presenting (e.g., on a screen and/or as audio or asother form of indication), information. The information may be based onreceived information and/or communication signaling carryinginformation. Presenting information may comprise processing receivedinformation, e.g. decoding and/or transforming, in particular betweendifferent formats, and/or for hardware used for presenting. Operating oninformation may be independent of or without presenting, and/or proceedor succeed presenting, and/or may be without user interaction or evenuser reception, for example for automatic processes, or target deviceswithout (e.g., regular) user interaction like MTC devices, of forautomotive or transport or industrial use. The information orcommunication signaling may be expected and/or received based on thetarget indication. Presenting and/or operating on information maygenerally comprise one or more processing steps, in particular decodingand/or executing and/or interpreting and/or transforming information.Operating on information may generally comprise relaying and/ortransmitting the information, e.g. on an air interface, which mayinclude mapping the information onto signaling (such mapping maygenerally pertain to one or more layers, e.g. one or more layers of anair interface, e.g. RLC (Radio Link Control) layer and/or MAC layerand/or physical layer/s). The information may be imprinted (or mapped)on communication signaling based on the target indication, which maymake it particularly suitable for use in a RAN (e.g., for a targetdevice like a network node or in particular a UE or terminal). The toolmay generally be adapted for use on a target device, like a UE orterminal. Generally, the tool may provide multiple functionalities, e.g.for providing and/or selecting the target indication, and/or presenting,e.g. video and/or audio, and/or operating on and/or storing receivedinformation. Providing a target indication may comprise transmitting ortransferring the indication as signaling, and/or carried on signaling,in a RAN, for example if the target device is a UE, or the tool for aUE. It should be noted that such provided information may be transferredto the information system via one or more additionally communicationinterfaces and/or paths and/or connections. The target indication may bea higher-layer indication and/or the information provided by theinformation system may be higher-layer information, e.g. applicationlayer or user-layer, in particular above radio layers like transportlayer and physical layer. The target indication may be mapped onphysical layer radio signaling, e.g. related to or on the user-plane,and/or the information may be mapped on physical layer radiocommunication signaling, e.g. related to or on the user-plane (inparticular, in reverse communication directions). The describedapproaches allow a target indication to be provided, facilitatinginformation to be provided in a specific format particularly suitableand/or adapted to efficiently use an air interface. A user input may forexample represent a selection from a plurality of possible transmissionmodes or formats, and/or paths, e.g. in terms of data rate and/orpackaging and/or size of information to be provided by the informationsystem.

In general, a numerology and/or subcarrier spacing may indicate thebandwidth (in frequency domain) of a subcarrier of a carrier, and/or thenumber of subcarriers in a carrier and/or the numbering of thesubcarriers in a carrier. Different numerologies may in particular bedifferent in the bandwidth of a subcarrier. In some variants, all thesubcarriers in a carrier have the same bandwidth associated to them. Thenumerology and/or subcarrier spacing may be different between carriersin particular regarding the subcarrier bandwidth. A symbol time length,and/or a time length of a timing structure pertaining to a carrier maybe dependent on the carrier frequency, and/or the subcarrier spacingand/or the numerology. In particular, different numerologies may havedifferent symbol time lengths.

Signaling may generally comprise one or more symbols and/or signalsand/or messages. A signal may comprise or represent one or more bits. Anindication may represent signaling, and/or be implemented as a signal,or as a plurality of signals. One or more signals may be included inand/or represented by a message. Signaling, in particular controlsignaling, may comprise a plurality of signals and/or messages, whichmay be transmitted on different carriers and/or be associated todifferent signaling processes, e.g. representing and/or pertaining toone or more such processes and/or corresponding information. Anindication may comprise signaling, and/or a plurality of signals and/ormessages and/or may be comprised therein, which may be transmitted ondifferent carriers and/or be associated to different acknowledgementsignaling processes, e.g. representing and/or pertaining to one or moresuch processes. Signaling associated to a channel may be transmittedsuch that represents signaling and/or information for that channel,and/or that the signaling is interpreted by the transmitter and/orreceiver to belong to that channel. Such signaling may generally complywith transmission parameters and/or format/s for the channel.

Reference signaling may be signaling comprising one or more referencesymbols and/or structures. Reference signaling may be adapted forgauging and/or estimating and/or representing transmission conditions,e.g. channel conditions and/or transmission path conditions and/orchannel (or signal or transmission) quality. It may be considered thatthe transmission characteristics (e.g., signal strength and/or formand/or modulation and/or timing) of reference signaling are availablefor both transmitter and receiver of the signaling (e.g., due to beingpredefined and/or configured or configurable and/or being communicated).Different types of reference signaling may be considered, e.g.pertaining to uplink, downlink or sidelink, cell-specific (inparticular, cell-wide, e.g., CRS) or device or user specific (addressedto a specific target or user equipment, e.g., CSI-RS),demodulation-related (e.g., DMRS) and/or signal strength related, e.g.power-related or energy-related or amplitude-related (e.g., SRS or pilotsignaling) and/or phase-related, etc.

An antenna arrangement may comprise one or more antenna elements(radiating elements), which may be combined in antenna arrays. Anantenna array or subarray may comprise one antenna element, or aplurality of antenna elements, which may be arranged e.g. twodimensionally (for example, a panel) or three dimensionally. It may beconsidered that each antenna array or subarray or element is separatelycontrollable, respectively that different antenna arrays arecontrollable separately from each other. A single antennaelement/radiator may be considered the smallest example of a subarray.Examples of antenna arrays comprise one or more multi-antenna panels orone or more individually controllable antenna elements. An antennaarrangement may comprise a plurality of antenna arrays. It may beconsidered that an antenna arrangement is associated to a (specificand/or single) radio node, e.g. a configuring or informing or schedulingradio node, e.g. to be controlled or controllable by the radio node. Anantenna arrangement associated to a UE or terminal may be smaller (e.g.,in size and/or number of antenna elements or arrays) than the antennaarrangement associated to a network node. Antenna elements of an antennaarrangement may be configurable for different arrays, e.g. to change thebeam forming characteristics. In particular, antenna arrays may beformed by combining one or more independently or separately controllableantenna elements or subarrays. The beams may be provided by analogbeamforming, or in some variants by digital beamforming. The informingradio nodes may be configured with the manner of beam transmission, e.g.by transmitting a corresponding indicator or indication, for example asbeam identify indication. However, there may be considered cases inwhich the informing radio node/s are not configured with suchinformation, and/or operate transparently, not knowing the way ofbeamforming used. An antenna arrangement may be considered separatelycontrollable in regard to the phase and/or amplitude/power and/or gainof a signal feed to it for transmission, and/or separately controllableantenna arrangements may comprise an independent or separate transmitand/or receive unit and/or ADC (Analog-Digital-Converter, alternativelyan ADC chain) to convert digital control information into an analogantenna feed for the whole antenna arrangement (the ADC may beconsidered part of, and/or connected or connectable to, antennacircuitry). A scenario in which each antenna element is individuallycontrollable may be referred to as digital beamforming, whereas ascenario in which larger arrays/subarrays are separately controllablemay be considered an example of analog beamforming. Hybrid forms may beconsidered.

Uplink or sidelink signaling may be OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency DivisionMultiple Access) or SC-FDMA (Single Carrier Frequency Division MultipleAccess) signaling.

Downlink signaling may in particular be OFDMA signaling. However,signaling is not limited thereto (Filter-Bank based signaling may beconsidered one alternative).

A radio node may generally be considered a device or node adapted forwireless and/or radio (and/or microwave) frequency communication, and/orfor communication utilising an air interface, e.g. according to acommunication standard.

A radio node may be a network node, or a user equipment or terminal. Anetwork node may be any radio node of a wireless communication network,e.g. a base station and/or gNodeB (gNB) and/or eNodeB (eNB) and/or relaynode and/or micro/nano/pico/femto node and/or transmission point (TP)and/or access point (AP) and/or other node, in particular for a RAN asdescribed herein.

The terms wireless device, user equipment (UE) and terminal may beconsidered to be interchangeable in the context of this disclosure. Awireless device, user equipment or terminal may represent an end devicefor communication utilising the wireless communication network, and/orbe implemented as a user equipment according to a standard. Examples ofuser equipments may comprise a phone like a smartphone, a personalcommunication device, a mobile phone or terminal, a computer, inparticular laptop, a sensor or machine with radio capability (and/oradapted for the air interface), in particular for MTC(Machine-Type-Communication, sometimes also referred to M2M,Machine-To-Machine), or a vehicle adapted for wireless communication. Auser equipment or terminal may be mobile or stationary.

A radio node may generally comprise processing circuitry and/or radiocircuitry. A radio node, in particular a network node, may in some casescomprise cable circuitry and/or communication circuitry, with which itmay be connected or connectable to another radio node and/or a corenetwork.

Circuitry may comprise integrated circuitry. Processing circuitry maycomprise one or more processors and/or controllers (e.g.,microcontrollers), and/or ASICs (Application Specific IntegratedCircuitry) and/or FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Array), or similar. Itmay be considered that processing circuitry comprises, and/or is(operatively) connected or connectable to one or more memories or memoryarrangements. A memory arrangement may comprise one or more memories. Amemory may be adapted to store digital information. Examples formemories comprise volatile and non-volatile memory, and/or Random AccessMemory (RAM), and/or Read-Only-Memory (ROM), and/or magnetic and/oroptical memory, and/or flash memory, and/or hard disk memory, and/orEPROM or EEPROM (Erasable Programmable ROM or Electrically ErasableProgrammable ROM).

Radio circuitry may comprise one or more transmitters and/or receiversand/or transceivers (a transceiver may operate or be operable astransmitter and receiver, and/or may comprise joint or separatedcircuitry for receiving and transmitting, e.g. in one package orhousing), and/or may comprise one or more amplifiers and/or oscillatorsand/or filters, and/or may comprise, and/or be connected or connectableto antenna circuitry and/or one or more antennas and/or antenna arrays.An antenna array may comprise one or more antennas, which may bearranged in a dimensional array, e.g. 2D or 3D array, and/or antennapanels. A remote radio head (RRH) may be considered as an example of anantenna array. However, in some variants, a RRH may be also beimplemented as a network node, depending on the kind of circuitry and/orfunctionality implemented therein.

Communication circuitry may comprise radio circuitry and/or cablecircuitry. Communication circuitry generally may comprise one or moreinterfaces, which may be air interface/s and/or cable interface/s and/oroptical interface/s, e.g. laser-based. Interface/s may be in particularpacket-based. Cable circuitry and/or a cable interfaces may comprise,and/or be connected or connectable to, one or more cables (e.g., opticalfiber-based and/or wire-based), which may be directly or indirectly(e.g., via one or more intermediate systems and/or interfaces) beconnected or connectable to a target, e.g. controlled by communicationcircuitry and/or processing circuitry.

Any one or all of the modules disclosed herein may be implemented insoftware and/or firmware and/or hardware. Different modules may beassociated to different components of a radio node, e.g. differentcircuitries or different parts of a circuitry. It may be considered thata module is distributed over different components and/or circuitries. Aprogram product as described herein may comprise the modules related toa device on which the program product is intended (e.g., a userequipment or network node) to be executed (the execution may beperformed on, and/or controlled by the associated circuitry).

A radio access network may be a wireless communication network, and/or aRadio Access Network (RAN) in particular according to a communicationstandard. A communication standard may in particular a standardaccording to 3GPP and/or 5G, e.g. according to NR or LTE, in particularLTE Evolution.

A wireless communication network may be and/or comprise a Radio AccessNetwork (RAN), which may be and/or comprise any kind of cellular and/orwireless radio network, which may be connected or connectable to a corenetwork. The approaches described herein are particularly suitable for a5G network, e.g. LTE Evolution and/or NR (New Radio), respectivelysuccessors thereof. A RAN may comprise one or more network nodes, and/orone or more terminals, and/or one or more radio nodes. A network nodemay in particular be a radio node adapted for radio and/or wirelessand/or cellular communication with one or more terminals. A terminal maybe any device adapted for radio and/or wireless and/or cellularcommunication with or within a RAN, e.g. a user equipment (UE) or mobilephone or smartphone or computing device or vehicular communicationdevice or device for machine-type-communication (MTC), etc. A terminalmay be mobile, or in some cases stationary. A RAN or a wirelesscommunication network may comprise at least one network node and a UE,or at least two radio nodes. There may be generally considered awireless communication network or system, e.g. a RAN or RAN system,comprising at least one radio node, and/or at least one network node andat least one terminal.

Transmitting in downlink may pertain to transmission from the network ornetwork node to the terminal. Transmitting in uplink may pertain totransmission from the terminal to the network or network node.Transmitting in sidelink may pertain to (direct) transmission from oneterminal to another. Uplink, downlink and sidelink (e.g., sidelinktransmission and reception) may be considered communication directions.In some variants, uplink and downlink may also be used to describedwireless communication between network nodes, e.g. for wireless backhauland/or relay communication and/or (wireless) network communication forexample between base stations or similar network nodes, in particularcommunication terminating at such. It may be considered that backhauland/or relay communication and/or network communication is implementedas a form of sidelink or uplink communication or similar thereto.

Control information or a control information message or correspondingsignaling (control signaling) may be transmitted on a control channel,e.g. a physical control channel, which may be a downlink channel or (ora sidelink channel in some cases, e.g. one UE scheduling another UE).For example, control information/allocation information may be signaledby a network node on PDCCH (Physical Downlink Control Channel) and/or aPDSCH (Physical Downlink Shared Channel) and/or a HARQ-specific channel.Acknowledgement signaling, e.g. as a form of control information orsignaling like uplink control information/signaling, may be transmittedby a terminal on a PUCCH (Physical Uplink Control Channel) and/or PUSCH(Physical Uplink Shared Channel) and/or a HARQ-specific channel.Multiple channels may apply for multi-component/multi-carrier indicationor signaling.

Signaling may generally be considered to represent an electromagneticwave structure (e.g., over a time interval and frequency interval),which is intended to convey information to at least one specific orgeneric (e.g., anyone who might pick up the signaling) target. A processof signaling may comprise transmitting the signaling. Transmittingsignaling, in particular control signaling or communication signaling,e.g. comprising or representing acknowledgement signaling and/orresource requesting information, may comprise encoding and/ormodulating. Encoding and/or modulating may comprise error detectioncoding and/or forward error correction encoding and/or scrambling.Receiving control signaling may comprise corresponding decoding and/ordemodulation. Error detection coding may comprise, and/or be based on,parity or checksum approaches, e.g. CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check).Forward error correction coding may comprise and/or be based on forexample turbo coding and/or Reed-Muller coding, and/or polar codingand/or LDPC coding (Low Density Parity Check). The type of coding usedmay be based on the channel (e.g., physical channel) the coded signal isassociated to. A code rate may represent the ratio of the number ofinformation bits before encoding to the number of encoded bits afterencoding, considering that encoding adds coding bits for error detectioncoding and forward error correction. Coded bits may refer to informationbits (also called systematic bits) plus coding bits.

Communication signaling may comprise, and/or represent, and/or beimplemented as, data signaling, and/or user plane signaling.Communication signaling may be associated to a data channel, e.g. aphysical downlink channel or physical uplink channel or physicalsidelink channel, in particular a PDSCH (Physical Downlink SharedChannel) or PSSCH (Physical Sidelink Shared Channel). Generally, a datachannel may be a shared channel or a dedicated channel. Data signalingmay be signaling associated to and/or on a data channel.

An indication generally may explicitly and/or implicitly indicate theinformation it represents and/or indicates. Implicit indication may forexample be based on position and/or resource used for transmission.Explicit indication may for example be based on a parametrisation withone or more parameters, and/or one or more index or indices, and/or oneor more bit patterns or bit fields representing the information. It mayin particular be considered that control signaling as described herein,based on the utilised resource sequence, implicitly indicates thecontrol signaling type.

A resource element may generally describe the smallest individuallyusable and/or encodable and/or decodable and/or modulatable and/ordemodulatable time-frequency resource, and/or may describe atime-frequency resource covering a symbol time length in time and asubcarrier in frequency. A signal may be allocatable and/or allocated toa resource element. A subcarrier may be a subband of a carrier, e.g. asdefined by a standard. A carrier may define a frequency and/or frequencyband for transmission and/or reception. In some variants, a signal(jointly encoded/modulated) may cover more than one resource elements. Aresource element may generally be as defined by a correspondingstandard, e.g. NR or LTE.

As symbol time length and/or subcarrier spacing (and/or numerology) maybe different between different symbols and/or subcarriers, differentresource elements may have different extension (length/width) in timeand/or frequency domain, in particular resource elements pertaining todifferent carriers.

A resource generally may represent a time-frequency and/or coderesource, on which signaling, e.g. according to a specific format, maybe communicated, for example transmitted and/or received, and/or beintended for transmission and/or reception.

A border symbol may generally represent a starting symbol or an endingsymbol for transmitting and/or receiving. A starting symbol may inparticular be a starting symbol of uplink or sidelink signaling, forexample control signaling or data signaling. Such signaling may be on adata channel or control channel, e.g. a physical channel, in particulara physical uplink shared channel (like PUSCH) or a sidelink data orshared channel, or a physical uplink control channel (like PUCCH) or asidelink control channel. If the starting symbol is associated tocontrol signaling (e.g., on a control channel), the control signalingmay be in response to received signaling (in sidelink or downlink), e.g.representing acknowledgement signaling associated thereto, which may beHARQ or ARQ signaling. An ending symbol may represent an ending symbol(in time) of downlink or sidelink transmission or signaling, which maybe intended or scheduled for the radio node or user equipment. Suchdownlink signaling may in particular be data signaling, e.g. on aphysical downlink channel like a shared channel, e.g. a PDSCH (PhysicalDownlink Shared Channel). A starting symbol may be determined based on,and/or in relation to, such an ending symbol.

Configuring a radio node, in particular a terminal or user equipment,may refer to the radio node being adapted or caused or set and/orinstructed to operate according to the configuration. Configuring may bedone by another device, e.g., a network node (for example, a radio nodeof the network like a base station or eNodeB) or network, in which caseit may comprise transmitting configuration data to the radio node to beconfigured. Such configuration data may represent the configuration tobe configured and/or comprise one or more instruction pertaining to aconfiguration, e.g. a configuration for transmitting and/or receiving onallocated resources, in particular frequency resources. A radio node mayconfigure itself, e.g., based on configuration data received from anetwork or network node. A network node may utilise, and/or be adaptedto utilise, its circuitry/ies for configuring. Allocation informationmay be considered a form of configuration data. Configuration data maycomprise and/or be represented by configuration information, and/or oneor more corresponding indications and/or message/s

Generally, configuring may include determining configuration datarepresenting the configuration and providing, e.g. transmitting, it toone or more other nodes (parallel and/or sequentially), which maytransmit it further to the radio node (or another node, which may berepeated until it reaches the wireless device). Alternatively, oradditionally, configuring a radio node, e.g., by a network node or otherdevice, may include receiving configuration data and/or data pertainingto configuration data, e.g., from another node like a network node,which may be a higher-level node of the network, and/or transmittingreceived configuration data to the radio node. Accordingly, determininga configuration and transmitting the configuration data to the radionode may be performed by different network nodes or entities, which maybe able to communicate via a suitable interface, e.g., an X2 interfacein the case of LTE or a corresponding interface for NR. Configuring aterminal may comprise scheduling downlink and/or uplink transmissionsfor the terminal, e.g. downlink data and/or downlink control signalingand/or DCI and/or uplink control or data or communication signaling, inparticular acknowledgement signaling, and/or configuring resourcesand/or a resource pool therefor.

A resource structure may be considered to be neighbored in frequencydomain by another resource structure, if they share a common borderfrequency, e.g. one as an upper frequency border and the other as alower frequency border. Such a border may for example be represented bythe upper end of a bandwidth assigned to a subcarrier n, which alsorepresents the lower end of a bandwidth assigned to a subcarrier n+1. Aresource structure may be considered to be neighbored in time domain byanother resource structure, if they share a common border time, e.g. oneas an upper (or right in the figures) border and the other as a lower(or left in the figures) border. Such a border may for example berepresented by the end of the symbol time interval assigned to a symboln, which also represents the beginning of a symbol time intervalassigned to a symbol n+1.

Generally, a resource structure being neighbored by another resourcestructure in a domain may also be referred to as abutting and/orbordering the other resource structure in the domain.

A resource structure may general represent a structure in time and/orfrequency domain, in particular representing a time interval and afrequency interval. A resource structure may comprise and/or becomprised of resource elements, and/or the time interval of a resourcestructure may comprise and/or be comprised of symbol time interval/s,and/or the frequency interval of a resource structure may compriseand/or be comprised of subcarrier/s. A resource element may beconsidered an example for a resource structure, a slot or mini-slot or aPhysical Resource Block (PRB) or parts thereof may be considered others.A resource structure may be associated to a specific channel, e.g. aPUSCH or PUCCH, in particular resource structure smaller than a slot orPRB.

Examples of a resource structure in frequency domain comprise abandwidth or band, or a bandwidth part. A bandwidth part may be a partof a bandwidth available for a radio node for communicating, e.g. due tocircuitry and/or configuration and/or regulations and/or a standard. Abandwidth part may be configured or configurable to a radio node. Insome variants, a bandwidth part may be the part of a bandwidth used forcommunicating, e.g. transmitting and/or receiving, by a radio node. Thebandwidth part may be smaller than the bandwidth (which may be a devicebandwidth defined by the circuitry/configuration of a device, and/or asystem bandwidth, e.g. available for a RAN). It may be considered that abandwidth part comprises one or more resource blocks or resource blockgroups, in particular one or more PRBs or PRB groups. A bandwidth partmay pertain to, and/or comprise, one or more carriers.

A carrier may generally represent a frequency range or band and/orpertain to a central frequency and an associated frequency interval. Itmay be considered that a carrier comprises a plurality of subcarriers. Acarrier may have assigned to it a central frequency or center frequencyinterval, e.g. represented by one or more subcarriers (to eachsubcarrier there may be generally assigned a frequency bandwidth orinterval). Different carriers may be non-overlapping, and/or may beneighboring in frequency domain.

It should be noted that the term “radio” in this disclosure may beconsidered to pertain to wireless communication in general, and may alsoinclude wireless communication utilising microwave and/or millimeterand/or other frequencies, in particular between 100 MHz or 1 GHz, and100 GHz or 20 or 10 GHz. Such communication may utilise one or morecarriers.

A radio node, in particular a network node or a terminal, may generallybe any device adapted for transmitting and/or receiving radio and/orwireless signals and/or data, in particular communication data, inparticular on at least one carrier. The at least one carrier maycomprise a carrier accessed based on a LBT procedure (which may becalled LBT carrier), e.g., an unlicensed carrier. It may be consideredthat the carrier is part of a carrier aggregate. A radio node that is anetwork node may be referred to as radio network node.

Receiving or transmitting on a cell or carrier may refer to receiving ortransmitting utilizing a frequency (band) or spectrum associated to thecell or carrier. A cell may generally comprise and/or be defined by orfor one or more carriers, in particular at least one carrier for ULcommunication/transmission (called UL carrier) and at least one carrierfor DL communication/transmission (called DL carrier). It may beconsidered that a cell comprises different numbers of UL carriers and DLcarriers.

Alternatively, or additionally, a cell may comprise at least one carrierfor UL communication/transmission and DL communication/transmission,e.g., in TDD-based approaches.

A channel may generally be a logical, transport or physical channel. Achannel may comprise and/or be arranged on one or more carriers, inparticular a plurality of subcarriers. A channel carrying and/or forcarrying control signaling/control information may be considered acontrol channel, in particular if it is a physical layer channel and/orif it carries control plane information. Analogously, a channel carryingand/or for carrying data signaling/user information may be considered adata channel, in particular if it is a physical layer channel and/or ifit carries user plane information. A channel may be defined for aspecific communication direction, or for two complementary communicationdirections (e.g., UL and DL, or sidelink in two directions), in whichcase it may be considered to have two component channels, one for eachdirection. Examples of channels comprise a channel for low latencyand/or high reliability transmission, in particular a channel forUltra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC), which may be forcontrol and/or data.

In general, a symbol may represent and/or be associated to a symbol timelength, which may be dependent on the carrier and/or subcarrier spacingand/or numerology of the associated carrier. Accordingly, a symbol maybe considered to indicate a time interval having a symbol time length inrelation to frequency domain. A symbol time length may be dependent on acarrier frequency and/or bandwidth and/or numerology and/or subcarrierspacing of, or associated to, a symbol. Accordingly, different symbolsmay have different symbol time lengths. In particular, numerologies withdifferent subcarrier spacings may have different symbol time length.Generally, a symbol time length may be based on, and/or include, a guardtime interval or cyclic extension, e.g. prefix or postfix.

A sidelink may generally represent a communication channel (or channelstructure) between two UEs and/or terminals, in which data istransmitted between the participants (UEs and/or terminals) via thecommunication channel, e.g. directly and/or without being relayed via anetwork node. A sidelink may be established only and/or directly via airinterface/s of the participant, which may be directly linked via thesidelink communication channel. In some variants, sidelink communicationmay be performed without interaction by a network node, e.g. on fixedlydefined resources and/or on resources negotiated between theparticipants. Alternatively, or additionally, it may be considered thata network node provides some control functionality, e.g. by configuringresources, in particular one or more resource pool/s, for sidelinkcommunication, and/or monitoring a sidelink, e.g. for charging purposes.

Sidelink communication may also be referred to as device-to-device (D2D)communication, and/or in some cases as ProSe (Proximity Services)communication, e.g. in the context of LTE. A sidelink may be implementedin the context of V2x communication (Vehicular communication), e.g. V2V(Vehicle-to-Vehicle), V2I (Vehicle-to-Infrastructure) and/or V2P(Vehicle-to-Person). Any device adapted for sidelink communication maybe considered a user equipment or terminal.

A sidelink communication channel (or structure) may comprise one or more(e.g., physical or logical) channels, e.g. a PSCCH (Physical SidelinkControl CHannel, which may for example carry control information like anacknowledgement position indication, and/or a PSSCH (Physical SidelinkShared CHannel, which for example may carry data and/or acknowledgementsignaling). It may be considered that a sidelink communication channel(or structure) pertains to and/or used one or more carrier/s and/orfrequency range/s associated to, and/or being used by, cellularcommunication, e.g. according to a specific license and/or standard.Participants may share a (physical) channel and/or resources, inparticular in frequency domain and/or related to a frequency resourcelike a carrier) of a sidelink, such that two or more participantstransmit thereon, e.g. simultaneously, and/or time-shifted, and/or theremay be associated specific channels and/or resources to specificparticipants, so that for example only one participant transmits on aspecific channel or on a specific resource or specific resources, e.g.,in frequency domain and/or related to one or more carriers orsubcarriers.

A sidelink may comply with, and/or be implemented according to, aspecific standard, e.g. a LTE-based standard and/or NR. A sidelink mayutilise TDD (Time Division Duplex) and/or FDD (Frequency DivisionDuplex) technology, e.g. as configured by a network node, and/orpreconfigured and/or negotiated between the participants. A userequipment may be considered to be adapted for sidelink communication ifit, and/or its radio circuitry and/or processing circuitry, is adaptedfor utilising a sidelink, e.g. on one or more frequency ranges and/orcarriers and/or in one or more formats, in particular according to aspecific standard. It may be generally considered that a Radio AccessNetwork is defined by two participants of a sidelink communication.Alternatively, or additionally, a Radio Access Network may berepresented, and/or defined with, and/or be related to a network nodeand/or communication with such a node.

Communication or communicating may generally comprise transmittingand/or receiving signaling. Communication on a sidelink (or sidelinksignaling) may comprise utilising the sidelink for communication(respectively, for signaling). Sidelink transmission and/or transmittingon a sidelink may be considered to comprise transmission utilising thesidelink, e.g. associated resources and/or transmission formats and/orcircuitry and/or the air interface. Sidelink reception and/or receivingon a sidelink may be considered to comprise reception utilising thesidelink, e.g. associated resources and/or transmission formats and/orcircuitry and/or the air interface. Sidelink control information (e.g.,SCI) may generally be considered to comprise control informationtransmitted utilising a sidelink.

Generally, carrier aggregation (CA) may refer to the concept of a radioconnection and/or communication link between a wireless and/or cellularcommunication network and/or network node and a terminal or on asidelink comprising a plurality of carriers for at least one directionof transmission (e.g. DL and/or UL), as well as to the aggregate ofcarriers. A corresponding communication link may be referred to ascarrier aggregated communication link or CA communication link; carriersin a carrier aggregate may be referred to as component carriers (CC). Insuch a link, data may be transmitted over more than one of the carriersand/or all the carriers of the carrier aggregation (the aggregate ofcarriers). A carrier aggregation may comprise one (or more) dedicatedcontrol carriers and/or primary carriers (which may e.g. be referred toas primary component carrier or PCC), over which control information maybe transmitted, wherein the control information may refer to the primarycarrier and other carriers, which may be referred to as secondarycarriers (or secondary component carrier, SCC). However, in someapproaches, control information may be send over more than one carrierof an aggregate, e.g. one or more PCCs and one PCC and one or more SCCs.

A transmission may generally pertain to a specific channel and/orspecific resources, in particular with a starting symbol and endingsymbol in time, covering the interval therebetween. A scheduledtransmission may be a transmission scheduled and/or expected and/or forwhich resources are scheduled or provided or reserved. However, notevery scheduled transmission has to be realized. For example, ascheduled downlink transmission may not be received, or a scheduleduplink transmission may not be transmitted due to power limitations, orother influences (e.g., a channel on an unlicensed carrier beingoccupied). A transmission may be scheduled for a transmission timingsubstructure (e.g., a mini-slot, and/or covering only a part of atransmission timing structure) within a transmission timing structurelike a slot. A border symbol may be indicative of a symbol in thetransmission timing structure at which the transmission starts or ends.

Predefined in the context of this disclosure may refer to the relatedinformation being defined for example in a standard, and/or beingavailable without specific configuration from a network or network node,e.g. stored in memory, for example independent of being configured.Configured or configurable may be considered to pertain to thecorresponding information being set/configured, e.g. by the network or anetwork node.

A configuration or schedule, like a mini-slot configuration and/orstructure configuration, may schedule transmissions, e.g. for thetime/transmissions it is valid, and/or transmissions may be scheduled byseparate signaling or separate configuration, e.g. separate RRCsignaling and/or downlink control information signaling. Thetransmission/s scheduled may represent signaling to be transmitted bythe device for which it is scheduled, or signaling to be received by thedevice for which it is scheduled, depending on which side of acommunication the device is. It should be noted that downlink controlinformation or specifically DCI signaling may be considered physicallayer signaling, in contrast to higher layer signaling like MAC (MediumAccess Control) signaling or RRC layer signaling. The higher the layerof signaling is, the less frequent/the more time/resource consuming itmay be considered, at least partially due to the information containedin such signaling having to be passed on through several layers, eachlayer requiring processing and handling.

A scheduled transmission, and/or transmission timing structure like amini-slot or slot, may pertain to a specific channel, in particular aphysical uplink shared channel, a physical uplink control channel, or aphysical downlink shared channel, e.g. PUSCH, PUCCH or PDSCH, and/or maypertain to a specific cell and/or carrier aggregation. A correspondingconfiguration, e.g. scheduling configuration or symbol configuration maypertain to such channel, cell and/or carrier aggregation. It may beconsidered that the scheduled transmission represents transmission on aphysical channel, in particular a shared physical channel, for example aphysical uplink shared channel or physical downlink shared channel. Forsuch channels, semi-persistent configuring may be particularly suitable.

Generally, a configuration may be a configuration indicating timing,and/or be represented or configured with corresponding configurationdata. A configuration may be embedded in, and/or comprised in, a messageor configuration or corresponding data, which may indicate and/orschedule resources, in particular semi-persistently and/orsemi-statically.

A control region of a transmission timing structure may be an intervalin time for intended or scheduled or reserved for control signaling, inparticular downlink control signaling, and/or for a specific controlchannel, e.g. a physical downlink control channel like PDCCH. Theinterval may comprise, and/or consist of, a number of symbols in time,which may be configured or configurable, e.g. by (UE-specific) dedicatedsignaling (which may be single-cast, for example addressed to orintended for a specific UE), e.g. on a PDCCH, or RRC signaling, or on amulticast or broadcast channel. In general, the transmission timingstructure may comprise a control region covering a configurable numberof symbols. It may be considered that in general the border symbol isconfigured to be after the control region in time.

The duration of a symbol (symbol time length or interval) of thetransmission timing structure may generally be dependent on a numerologyand/or carrier, wherein the numerology and/or carrier may beconfigurable. The numerology may be the numerology to be used for thescheduled transmission.

Scheduling a device, or for a device, and/or related transmission orsignaling, may be considered comprising, or being a form of, configuringthe device with resources, and/or of indicating to the device resources,e.g. to use for communicating. Scheduling may in particular pertain to atransmission timing structure, or a substructure thereof (e.g., a slotor a mini-slot, which may be considered a substructure of a slot). Itmay be considered that a border symbol may be identified and/ordetermined in relation to the transmission timing structure even if fora substructure being scheduled, e.g. if an underlying timing grid isdefined based on the transmission timing structure. Signaling indicatingscheduling may comprise corresponding scheduling information and/or beconsidered to represent or contain configuration data indicating thescheduled transmission and/or comprising scheduling information. Suchconfiguration data or signaling may be considered a resourceconfiguration or scheduling configuration. It should be noted that sucha configuration (in particular as single message) in some cases may notbe complete without other configuration data, e.g. configured with othersignaling, e.g. higher layer signaling. In particular, the symbolconfiguration may be provided in addition to scheduling/resourceconfiguration to identify exactly which symbols are assigned to ascheduled transmission. A scheduling (or resource) configuration mayindicate transmission timing structure/s and/or resource amount (e.g.,in number of symbols or length in time) for a scheduled transmission.

A scheduled transmission may be transmission scheduled, e.g. by thenetwork or network node. Transmission may in this context may be uplink(UL) or downlink (DL) or sidelink (SL) transmission. A device, e.g. auser equipment, for which the scheduled transmission is scheduled, mayaccordingly be scheduled to receive (e.g., in DL or SL), or to transmit(e.g. in UL or SL) the scheduled transmission. Scheduling transmissionmay in particular be considered to comprise configuring a scheduleddevice with resource/s for this transmission, and/or informing thedevice that the transmission is intended and/or scheduled for someresources. A transmission may be scheduled to cover a time interval, inparticular a successive number of symbols, which may form a continuousinterval in time between (and including) a starting symbol and an endingsymbols. The starting symbol and the ending symbol of a (e.g.,scheduled) transmission may be within the same transmission timingstructure, e.g. the same slot. However, in some cases, the ending symbolmay be in a later transmission timing structure than the startingsymbol, in particular a structure following in time. To a scheduledtransmission, a duration may be associated and/or indicated, e.g. in anumber of symbols or associated time intervals. In some variants, theremay be different transmissions scheduled in the same transmission timingstructure. A scheduled transmission may be considered to be associatedto a specific channel, e.g. a shared channel like PUSCH or PDSCH.

In the context of this disclosure, there may be distinguished betweendynamically scheduled or aperiodic transmission and/or configuration,and semi-static or semi-persistent or periodic transmission and/orconfiguration. The term “dynamic” or similar terms may generally pertainto configuration/transmission valid and/or scheduled and/or configuredfor (relatively) short timescales and/or a (e.g., predefined and/orconfigured and/or limited and/or definite) number of occurrences and/ortransmission timing structures, e.g. one or more transmission timingstructures like slots or slot aggregations, and/or for one or more(e.g., specific number) of transmission/occurrences. Dynamicconfiguration may be based on low-level signaling, e.g. controlsignaling on the physical layer and/or MAC layer, in particular in theform of DCI or SCI. Periodic/semi-static may pertain to longertimescales, e.g. several slots and/or more than one frame, and/or anon-defined number of occurrences, e.g., until a dynamic configurationcontradicts, or until a new periodic configuration arrives. A periodicor semi-static configuration may be based on, and/or be configured with,higher-layer signaling, in particular RCL layer signaling and/or RRCsignaling and/or MAC signaling.

A transmission timing structure may comprise a plurality of symbols,and/or define an interval comprising several symbols (respectively theirassociated time intervals). In the context of this disclosure, it shouldbe noted that a reference to a symbol for ease of reference may beinterpreted to refer to the time domain projection or time interval ortime component or duration or length in time of the symbol, unless it isclear from the context that the frequency domain component also has tobe considered. Examples of transmission timing structures include slot,subframe, mini-slot (which also may be considered a substructure of aslot), slot aggregation (which may comprise a plurality of slots and maybe considered a superstructure of a slot), respectively their timedomain component. A transmission timing structure may generally comprisea plurality of symbols defining the time domain extension (e.g.,interval or length or duration) of the transmission timing structure,and arranged neighboring to each other in a numbered sequence. A timingstructure (which may also be considered or implemented assynchronisation structure) may be defined by a succession of suchtransmission timing structures, which may for example define a timinggrid with symbols representing the smallest grid structures. Atransmission timing structure, and/or a border symbol or a scheduledtransmission may be determined or scheduled in relation to such a timinggrid. A transmission timing structure of reception may be thetransmission timing structure in which the scheduling control signalingis received, e.g. in relation to the timing grid. A transmission timingstructure may in particular be a slot or subframe or in some cases, amini-slot.

Feedback signaling may be considered a form or control signaling, e.g.uplink or sidelink control signaling, like UCI (Uplink ControlInformation) signaling or SCI (Sidelink Control Information) signaling.Feedback signaling may in particular comprise and/or representacknowledgement signaling and/or acknowledgement information and/ormeasurement reporting.

Acknowledgement information may comprise an indication of a specificvalue or state for an acknowledgement signaling process, e.g. ACK orNACK or DTX. Such an indication may for example represent a bit or bitvalue or bit pattern or an information switch. Different levels ofacknowledgement information, e.g. providing differentiated informationabout quality of reception and/or error position in received dataelement/s may be considered and/or represented by control signaling.Acknowledgment information may generally indicate acknowledgment ornon-acknowledgment or non-reception or different levels thereof, e.g.representing ACK or NACK or DTX. Acknowledgment information may pertainto one acknowledgement signaling process. Acknowledgement signaling maycomprise acknowledgement information pertaining to one or moreacknowledgement signaling processes, in particular one or more HARQ orARQ processes. It may be considered that to each acknowledgmentsignaling process the acknowledgement information pertains to, aspecific number of bits of the information size of the control signalingis assigned. Measurement reporting signaling may comprise measurementinformation.

Signaling may generally comprise one or more symbols and/or signalsand/or messages. A signal may comprise and/or represent one or morebits, which may be modulated into a common modulated signal. Anindication may represent signaling, and/or be implemented as a signal,or as a plurality of signals. One or more signals may be included inand/or represented by a message. Signaling, in particular controlsignaling, may comprise a plurality of signals and/or messages, whichmay be transmitted on different carriers and/or be associated todifferent acknowledgement signaling processes, e.g. representing and/orpertaining to one or more such processes. An indication may comprisesignaling and/or a plurality of signals and/or messages and/or may becomprised therein, which may be transmitted on different carriers and/orbe associated to different acknowledgement signaling processes, e.g.representing and/or pertaining to one or more such processes.

Signaling utilising, and/or on and/or associated to, resources or aresource structure may be signaling covering the resources or structure,signaling on the associated frequency/ies and/or in the associated timeinterval/s. It may be considered that a signaling resource structurecomprises and/or encompasses one or more substructures, which may beassociated to one or more different channels and/or types of signalingand/or comprise one or more holes (resource element/s not scheduled fortransmissions or reception of transmissions). A resource substructure,e.g. a feedback resource structure, may generally be continuous in timeand/or frequency, within the associated intervals. It may be consideredthat a substructure, in particular a feedback resource structure,represents a rectangle filled with one or more resource elements intime/frequency space. However, in some cases, a resource structure orsubstructure, in particular a frequency resource range, may represent anon-continuous pattern of resources in one or more domains, e.g. timeand/or frequency. The resource elements of a substructure may bescheduled for associated signaling.

It should generally be noted that the number of bits or a bit rateassociated to specific signaling that can be carried on a resourceelement may be based on a modulation and coding scheme (MCS). Thus, bitsor a bit rate may be seen as a form of resources representing a resourcestructure or range in frequency and/or time, e.g. depending on MCS. TheMCS may be configured or configurable, e.g. by control signaling, e.g.DCI or MAC (Medium Access Control) or RRC (Radio Resource Control)signaling.

Different formats of for control information may be considered, e.g.different formats for a control channel like a Physical Uplink ControlChannel (PUCCH). PUCCH may carry control information or correspondingcontrol signaling, e.g. Uplink Control Information (UCI). UCI maycomprise feedback signaling, and/or acknowledgement signaling like HARQfeedback (ACK/NACK), and/or measurement information signaling, e.g.comprising Channel Quality Information (CQI), and/or Scheduling Request(SR) signaling. One of the supported PUCCH formats may be short, and maye.g. occur at the end of a slot interval, and/or multiplexed and/orneighboring to PUSCH. Similar control information may be provided on asidelink, e.g. as Sidelink Control Information (SCI), in particular on a(physical) sidelink control channel, like a (P)SCCH.

A code block may be considered a subelement of a data element like atransport block, e.g., a transport block may comprise a one or aplurality of code blocks.

A scheduling assignment may be configured with control signaling, e.g.downlink control signaling or sidelink control signaling. Such controlssignaling may be considered to represent and/or comprise schedulingsignaling, which may indicate scheduling information. A schedulingassignment may be considered scheduling information indicatingscheduling of signaling/transmission of signaling, in particularpertaining to signaling received or to be received by the deviceconfigured with the scheduling assignment. It may be considered that ascheduling assignment may indicate data (e.g., data block or elementand/or channel and/or data stream) and/or an (associated)acknowledgement signaling process and/or resource/s on which the data(or, in some cases, reference signaling) is to be received and/orindicate resource/s for associated feedback signaling, and/or a feedbackresource range on which associated feedback signaling is to betransmitted. Transmission associated to an acknowledgement signalingprocess, and/or the associated resources or resource structure, may beconfigured and/or scheduled, for example by a scheduling assignment.Different scheduling assignments may be associated to differentacknowledgement signaling processes. A scheduling assignment may beconsidered an example of downlink control information or signaling, e.g.if transmitted by a network node and/or provided on downlink (orsidelink control information if transmitted using a sidelink and/or by auser equipment).

A scheduling grant (e.g., uplink grant) may represent control signaling(e.g., downlink control information/signaling). It may be consideredthat a scheduling grant configures the signaling resource range and/orresources for uplink (or sidelink) signaling, in particular uplinkcontrol signaling and/or feedback signaling, e.g. acknowledgementsignaling. Configuring the signaling resource range and/or resources maycomprise configuring or scheduling it for transmission by the configuredradio node. A scheduling grant may indicate a channel and/or possiblechannels to be used/usable for the feedback signaling, in particularwhether a shared channel like a PUSCH may be used/is to be used. Ascheduling grant may generally indicate uplink resource/s and/or anuplink channel and/or a format for control information pertaining toassociated scheduling assignments. Both grant and assignment/s may beconsidered (downlink or sidelink) control information, and/or beassociated to, and/or transmitted with, different messages.

A resource structure in frequency domain (which may be referred to asfrequency interval and/or range) may be represented by a subcarriergrouping. A subcarrier grouping may comprise one or more subcarriers,each of which may represent a specific frequency interval, and/orbandwidth. The bandwidth of a subcarrier, the length of the interval infrequency domain, may be determined by the subcarrier spacing and/ornumerology. The subcarriers may be arranged such that each subcarrierneighbours at least one other subcarrier of the grouping in frequencyspace (for grouping sizes larger than 1). The subcarriers of a groupingmay be associated to the same carrier, e.g. configurably or configuredof predefined. A physical resource block may be consideredrepresentative of a grouping (in frequency domain). A subcarriergrouping may be considered to be associated to a specific channel and/ortype of signaling, it transmission for such channel or signaling isscheduled and/or transmitted and/or intended and/or configured for atleast one, or a plurality, or all subcarriers in the grouping. Suchassociation may be time-dependent, e.g. configured or configurable orpredefined, and/or dynamic or semi-static. The association may bedifferent for different devices, e.g. configured or configurable orpredefined, and/or dynamic or semi-static. Patterns of subcarriergroupings may be considered, which may comprise one or more subcarriergroupings (which may be associated to same or differentsignalings/channels), and/or one or more groupings without associatedsignaling (e.g., as seen from a specific device). An example of apattern is a comb, for which between pairs of groupings associated tothe same signaling/channel there are arranged one or more groupingsassociated to one or more different channels and/or signaling types,and/or one or more groupings without associated channel/signaling).

Example types of signaling comprise signaling of a specificcommunication direction, in particular, uplink signaling, downlinksignaling, sidelink signaling, as well as reference signaling (e.g., SRSor CRS or CSI-RS), communication signaling, control signaling, and/orsignaling associated to a specific channel like PUSCH, PDSCH, PUCCH,PDCCH, PSCCH, PSSCH, etc.).

In this disclosure, for purposes of explanation and not limitation,specific details are set forth (such as particular network functions,processes and signaling steps) in order to provide a thoroughunderstanding of the technique presented herein. It will be apparent toone skilled in the art that the present concepts and aspects may bepracticed in other variants and variants that depart from these specificdetails.

For example, the concepts and variants are partially described in thecontext of Long Term Evolution (LTE) or LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) or NewRadio mobile or wireless communications technologies; however, this doesnot rule out the use of the present concepts and aspects in connectionwith additional or alternative mobile communication technologies such asthe Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). While describedvariants may pertain to certain Technical Specifications (TSs) of theThird Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), it will be appreciated thatthe present approaches, concepts and aspects could also be realized inconnection with different Performance Management (PM) specifications.

Moreover, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the services,functions and steps explained herein may be implemented using softwarefunctioning in conjunction with a programmed microprocessor, or using anApplication Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), a Digital SignalProcessor (DSP), a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) or generalpurpose computer. It will also be appreciated that while the variantsdescribed herein are elucidated in the context of methods and devices,the concepts and aspects presented herein may also be embodied in aprogram product as well as in a system comprising control circuitry,e.g. a computer processor and a memory coupled to the processor, whereinthe memory is encoded with one or more programs or program products thatexecute the services, functions and steps disclosed herein.

It is believed that the advantages of the aspects and variants presentedherein will be fully understood from the foregoing description, and itwill be apparent that various changes may be made in the form,constructions and arrangement of the exemplary aspects thereof withoutdeparting from the scope of the concepts and aspects described herein orwithout sacrificing all of its advantageous effects. The aspectspresented herein can be varied in many ways.

Some useful abbreviations comprise

Abbreviation Explanation ACK/NACK Acknowledgment/NegativeAcknowledgement ARQ Automatic Repeat reQuest CAZAC Constant AmplitudeZero Cross Correlation CB Code Block CBG Code Block Group CDM CodeDivision Multiplex CM Cubic Metric CQI Channel Quality Information CRCCyclic Redundancy Check CRS Common reference signal CSI Channel StateInformation CSI-RS Channel state information reference signal DAIDownlink Assignment Indicator DCI Downlink Control Information DFTDiscrete Fourier Transform DM(-)RS Demodulation reference signal(ing)FDD Frequency Division Duplex FDM Frequency Division Multiplex HARQHybrid Automatic Repeat Request IFFT Inverse Fast Fourier Transform MBBMobile Broadband MCS Modulation and Coding Scheme MIMOMultiple-input-multiple-output MRC Maximum-ratio combining MRTMaximum-ratio transmission MU-MIMO Multiusermultiple-input-multiple-output OFDM/A Orthogonal Frequency DivisionMultiplex/Multiple Access PAPR Peak to Average Power Ratio PDCCHPhysical Downlink Control Channel PDSCH Physical Downlink Shared ChannelPRACH Physical Random Access CHannel PRB Physical Resource Block PUCCHPhysical Uplink Control Channel PUSCH Physical Uplink Shared Channel(P)SCCH (Physical) Sidelink Control Channel (P)SSCH (Physical) SidelinkShared Channel RAN Radio Access Network RAT Radio Access Technology RBResource Block RRC Radio Resource Control SA Scheduling AssignmentSC-FDM/A Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiplex/Multiple Access SCISidelink Control Information SINR Signal-to-interference-plus-noiseratio SIR Signal-to-interference ratio SNR Signal-to-noise-ratio SRScheduling Request SRS Sounding Reference Signal(ing) SVD Singular-valuedecomposition TB Transport Block TDD Time Division Duplex TDM TimeDivision Multiplex UCI Uplink Control Information UE User EquipmentURLLC Ultra Low Latency High Reliability Communication VL-MIMOVery-large multiple-input-multiple-output ZF Zero Forcing

Abbreviations may be considered to follow 3GPP usage if applicable.

1-11. (canceled)
 12. A method of operating a network node in a radioaccess network, the method comprising: detecting Physical Random AccessCHannel (PRACH) transmission from a user equipment, wherein the PRACHtransmission covers a plurality of time intervals, wherein detectingcomprises associating different weights to different time intervals. 13.The method of claim 12, wherein the weights are associated based oninterference for the respective time interval, and wherein interferenceis different for different ones of the time intervals.
 14. The method ofclaim 12, wherein weights are associated to the signal in the respectivetime interval.
 15. The method of claim 12, wherein weights areassociated to a noise or signal quality estimation for the respectivetime interval.
 16. The method of claim 12, wherein for a time interval,different or the same weights are associated to the signal in the timeinterval and a signal quality or noise estimation for the time interval.17. The method of claim 12, wherein a detection threshold for detectingthe PRACH transmission is adapted based on the weights and/or differentinterference for different time intervals.
 18. The method of claim 12,wherein associating weights is performed based on an interferenceindication.
 19. A computer-readable medium comprising, stored thereupon,program instructions configured to cause processing circuitry to performa method of claim
 12. 20. A network node for a radio access network, thenetwork node comprising: radio circuitry; and processing circuitryoperatively coupled to the radio circuitry; wherein the network node isconfigured to detect Physical Random Access CHannel (PRACH) transmissionfrom a user equipment, wherein the PRACH transmission covers a pluralityof time intervals, wherein detecting comprises associating differentweights to different time intervals.
 21. The network node of claim 20,wherein the weights are associated based on interference for therespective time interval, and wherein interference is different fordifferent ones of the time intervals.
 22. The network node of claim 20,wherein the processing circuitry is configured to associate weights tothe signal in the respective time interval.
 23. The network node ofclaim 20, wherein the processing circuitry is configured to associateweights to a noise or signal quality estimation for the respective timeinterval.
 24. The network node of claim 20, wherein the processingcircuitry is configured to, for a time interval, associate different orthe same weights to the signal for the time interval and to a signalquality or noise estimation for the time interval.
 25. The network nodeof claim 20, wherein the processing circuitry is configured to adapt adetection threshold for detecting the PRACH transmission, based on theweights and/or different interference for different time intervals. 26.The network node of claim 20, wherein the processing circuitry isconfigured to associate the weights based on an interference indication.